A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

New to Aquaponics working on designing my System

I still in the planning and gathering stage. I got 2 fiberglass showers I'm going to start with. One is 300 gallon other 400 not sure witch to us as the tank or the grow bed. Smaller one has a smooth back the larger has a towel rack build in which if I used as a grow bed would trap water would it go stagnate? Or if it was in the fish tank would it trap debris and cause problems. There both roughly 3x3x6.5 feet.

I see all this PVC used is it glue or just fitted, if glue any special glue? Still pondering fish type as I'm on Vancouver Island and not sure how water I can keep water in winter though I'm thinking about burying the tank to help regulate the temperature. I have a bunch of electrical PVC have to see if it is the same size as regular stuff so I can get ball values for it. Planning on going with gravel beds for growth media but not sure with just the one bed if I will have enough grow area. Still a long way off from putting anything together yet.

Thanks for any help or advice.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Margaret on June 22, 2012 at 10:54pm

I think that I would use the one with a towel bar for the fish tank. I don't know that much about aquaponics yet, but it seems that it might be a mess to take care of in the gravel bed.

I just started also so I am curious to see what your system will look like set up.

Permalink Reply by TCLynx on June 23, 2012 at 7:28am

Can you post some pictures of your materials so we can get a better idea what you are working with?

The towel rack may not be a real issue in a grow bed. If flood and drain the water will recirculate enough to mix it each flood so I wouldn't worry about a pocket that never drains. Most of my media beds, the bottom 4 inches never totally drain just because of how the plumbing is set up (they are 24 inch deep beds though.)

PVC, to glue or not to glue. Where there is much pressure or likelyhood that pipes to get knocked apart, I cement them. Where they are buried where I can't see if they are leaking, I cement them. If I know I will need to take them apart but there is pressure, I will use a union or a flexible rubber coupling. If the pipes are secure from being knocked about and not under enough pressure to leak or blow apart, I might leave them simply dry fitted to make later changes easier.

Sometimes, where I don't want to glue the pipes but there is leaking or danger of being knocked apart, I might use some aquarium safe silicone and a stainless steel screw to secure things.

As to the electrical conduit, if you feel comfortable using it for your food, then ok. However, what size is it? One of my rules is to generally up size plumbing. There are very few applications where I use 1/2" or 3/4" plumbing. For a system with a fish tank and grow bed of perhaps 200 gallons each? I would probably go for 1" plumbing from the pump to the grow bed which means the drain plumbing from the grow bed to the fish tank probably needs to be bigger but if the grow bed is partly over the fish tank, you only need a small bit of the big plumbing.

Here is a blog post I wrote ages ago on the subject of basic media bed system design.

http://www.aquaponiclynx.com/media-bed-aquaponic-design

And here is a link with the slides from my plumbing class I gave last fall

http://www.aquaponiclynx.com/aquaponic-lynx-llc/aquaponics-in-detai...

Permalink Reply by Mike Bewcyk on June 23, 2012 at 4:34pm

Hear are the pictures of what I plan on using to start. I the Reno business so there is a good chance I will be able to get more shower or tubs down the road. I plan on renovating my bathroom soon so might use my own tub to add to the system. Any suggestion how to plug up the large hole that had light and the shower control in it?

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Permalink Reply by Phil Slaton on June 23, 2012 at 4:59pm

What a creative use. I know a guy that owned a shower stall mfg. business and went out of business he should have switched to making low cost fish tanks for Aquaponics.

Permalink Reply by TCLynx on June 23, 2012 at 7:14pm

Cool.

I wouldn't worry about where you put the one with the "towel rack"

I would recommend that you support them well to avoid "cracking" issues once the weight of stone and water are in them.

And a tip, you can post photos directly in posts using the img button (it's at the top of the post box right next to the link button.

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Permalink Reply by Phil Slaton on June 23, 2012 at 9:04pm

Put the grow tank on stacked concrete blocks, supported by 2 - 4 x 4s spanned between the stacked concrete blocks.

Permalink Reply by Mike Bewcyk on April 16, 2014 at 6:17pm

Hear is the system on a test run. Need to replace water if make shift filter does not get the Iron out. Guess I should of flushed the tank on the fire truck before filling DOH. Will need to add my third bed too or add a value to the fish tank because I think it will over flow the fish tank. Or add a second drain to it. It is slowly rising above the drain pipe.

Next will be gravel and to start cycling Can't believe it has taken me 2 years to get to this point. Oh and time to find some fish