System design

[Sylvia Bernstein]

What are your thoughts on system design?  Media vs raft.  Deep media beds vs shallow.  Siphons vs timers.  Tell us your thoughts and let's get the conversation rolling

[Gus Cabrera]

I love the idea of vertical and want to try it with strawberries. I want to get some experience first and see how AP works best for me in this area. Right now, I don't even know where I'll be living. Some of my criteria for my system are: as little continuing work as possible commensurate with good results; small start-up cost; easy absentee care when needed; and wide range of experimentation without the ulterior scientific jargon and practice - I'll leave that up to the technorati among us.

[TCLynx]

I think you will find the flood and drain gravel/media section of the system to give you the easy absentee care. I like the idea of towers but have not yet worked out how to keep my feeds 100% free from clogs when I leave town for weeks at a time (I'm not expecting my neighbor to check the feeds into each of my towers and I've had a few dry out when I've been away.)


Gus Cabrera said:

I love the idea of vertical and want to try it with strawberries. I want to get some experience first and see how AP works best for me in this area. Right now, I don't even know where I'll be living. Some of my criteria for my system are: as little continuing work as possible commensurate with good results; small start-up cost; easy absentee care when needed; and wide range of experimentation without the ulterior scientific jargon and practice - I'll leave that up to the technorati among us.

[Darryl Hinson]

I'm not sure if my post went out sooooo, here it is again.....
When using a timer system...I assume you guys use some kind of solenoid valve.....and run conduit all around your tanks, etc...or do you build a manifold of some kind away from the h2o....and where do you get the solenoids for water use.....

[TCLynx]

NO most people who use timers, are not using any kind of solenoid valves.

Most irrigation type solenoid valves require quite a lot of pressure to operate and may also not be appropriate for goopy fish poopy water. In most situations, it does not require a pressure pump to drive that kind of pressure to flood grow beds and it is easier to simply turn the pump on and off with a regular outlet timer or a repeat cycle timer.

If you do not wish to flood all grow beds at once, talk to me as I can tell you about Indexing valves. Most people just have enough water or a sump tank to handle flooding all their grow beds at once though.


Darryl Hinson said:

I'm not sure if my post went out sooooo, here it is again.....
When using a timer system...I assume you guys use some kind of solenoid valve.....and run conduit all around your tanks, etc...or do you build a manifold of some kind away from the h2o....and where do you get the solenoids for water use.....

[Darryl Hinson]

Kobus Jooste said:

Darryl - TC gave you two good, and possibly widest used options there. I do not use indexing valves as she does, and have a tank with fluctuating water level. I pump three small gravel beds full out of my 1000 liter tank at a time, which is about the max I can do without making water volume an issue. The downside of this sump-less design is that you stock your tank for the lower level the water drops to, because if a siphon fails, the gravel bed will stay full and the fish will suddenly have a lot less space. I plan to add a 300 liter sump to my system in the future to allow for the water level to stay a bit more stable and potentially to add a fourth flood-and-drain bed in the current configuration.

[Darryl Hinson]

Kobus:
I cant figure out how to reply to your comment....so I'm writing here...havent learned the in's out's to the forum yet.
I might be on the wrong track....here's what I have done.
I have 4 barrels cut in half (8 halves)...I built my siphons and used a water hose to pump enough water into the beds to flood the siphon and make it work. I took a 5 gallon bucket and timed how much water that was and found out that it was 1 gpm.
I figure that each barrel when filled with gravel will take about 7 gallons of volume to fill....
So that will only take 7 minutes to fill ....it drains in about 2 minutes by the way.
If utimately these barrels sync and need to fill all at once....that's 1gpm x 8 barrels = 8gpm OR 480GPH.
I bought a 950GPH pump at 0 head...the catalog says I can pump 600 GPH at 8 feet of head and 400GPH at 10 ft. of head
My GB's are 6 ft aboove my fish tank bottom....because of the land contour....
Question:
I have read that I need to fill and drain once an hour.....if that's so, I cant figure out how to do that as my siphons are not that large and I cant reduce my fill rate....the siphon drop will not saturate and start to work....
Can you please comment on my system....with regards to flow rate and flood and drain time...
Darryl

[Raychel A Watkins]

Aloha All
When I went to the class on the big island I learned only about rafts. They have done me well for almost a year but I could not grow cucumbers and squash and the like. Since being on this site I have leaned about gravel beds. i want you to know that my first cucumber weighed 9.5 oz and the second weighed 1 lb. I was so excited. I am now using both rafts and gravel. Since my hope is to show others about the wonders of aquaponics I have set up two exact systems right next to each other. One is gravel one is raft. The roses bloom well in both. The cucumber, eggplant, and oregano are wonderful in gravel. The Manoa lettuce, swisschard, and spinach are awesome in the raft. I can't give up either.

[Sylvia Bernstein]

Hi Raychel. Haven't seen you in here for a while so it's great to have you back! So glad you are doing this kind of side by side, and it sounds like you are "proving" what many of us have been saying - both systems work well, but there are crops that work better in one vs the other. Leafy greens are great in rafts, other plants work great in media beds, and frankly the ultimate system is a combination of the two. Bravo!

[Gus Cabrera]

Aloha again, Rachel. Now I know I'm really dying to see your system. I like the idea of a hybrid system since I do like a variety of things and enjoy experimenting.

Raychel A Watkins said:

Aloha All
When I went to the class on the big island I learned only about rafts. They have done me well for almost a year but I could not grow cucumbers and squash and the like. Since being on this site I have leaned about gravel beds. i want you to know that my first cucumber weighed 9.5 oz and the second weighed 1 lb. I was so excited. I am now using both rafts and gravel. Since my hope is to show others about the wonders of aquaponics I have set up two exact systems right next to each other. One is gravel one is raft. The roses bloom well in both. The cucumber, eggplant, and oregano are wonderful in gravel. The Manoa lettuce, swisschard, and spinach are awesome in the raft. I can't give up either.

[TCLynx]

Hay Kobus, I feel for your confusion over the imperial measure. I have similar issues getting my mind to convert certain things into metric (though I'm sure I have it far easier since many metric things are easier.)

Anyway, to help out 1 cubic foot of grow bed is around 7.5 gallons. So for each cubic foot of grow bed supporting a pound of fish would need at least about 3.25 gallons of fish tank if there is a means of mitigating fluctuations (sump tank or sequencing) if there is no means of mitigation water level fluctuations, I would recommend the 1:1 grow bed to fish tank and there for each cubic foot of flood and drain media filled grow bed should have an equal volume of fish tank or about 7.5 gallons or so. Often easier to figure both in gallons I know.

Kobus is right, you can definitely circulate more water than the fish tank volume per hour. The max pumping rate is determined by not wanting to exhaust your fish by making them swim against the rapids all the time. I turn my fish tank volumes over several times an hour. It is fine/normal/good if siphon beds flood and drain several times an hour.

[Darryl Hinson]

Where are all you people from...?
Sylvia....could we list the locations of various individuals on the forum without compromising privacy?
Could we list their location or home town as a byline next to their name.....maybe if not mandatory....list it as an option.....i could be wrong and it may be available already....
It would be a useful tool for me to bond more closely with those in my own region....not that I dont like to hear from the guy in Africa.....Kobus??....he's great to talk to....

[TCLynx]

Click on some one's picture there Darryl and you will be taken to their page and right under their picture on their page you will see the location that they have posted
I've been begging for a location to be right under the pictures on every post but it doesn't seem that the ning programmers are very interested in helping on that one yet (it would be helpful to know where people are right in the conversations.)

And as to chatting with people who might be close to you, look in the groups section, several states have groups started.

Darryl Hinson said:

Where are all you people from...?
Sylvia....could we list the locations of various individuals on the forum without compromising privacy?
Could we list their location or home town as a byline next to their name.....maybe if not mandatory....list it as an option.....i could be wrong and it may be available already....
It would be a useful tool for me to bond more closely with those in my own region....not that I dont like to hear from the guy in Africa.....Kobus??....he's great to talk to....