How often should I have the pumps turned on?

[halemart]

I think I will be doing some tests this week to determine how few times a day I can go running the pumps in my system.

 

Since I have no fish in my system at present, I only have to keep the microbes worms, and plants happy, so think i will test running 1 hour off 30 min on for the day.

 

The reason I am trying this is to see how I can best conserve power for my system for solar operation.

 

I guess my questions are:

 

What is the longest duration one can go in running water to the plants   once every 24 hours   2 times every 24 hours?   I guess one needs to think of the bacteria as well.   how often do they need to be wet?

 

 

Love to get others input on this subject.

 

 

Peace

 

 

 

 

 

[TCLynx]

How long you can go between floods is going to depend on a few things and it will vary by time of year and fish load.

 

If your fish load remains so low that the time between bio-filtration isn't a problem then you will just have to consider the bacteria really.  Plants should have enough moisture as long as you keep the bacteria moist.

 

How will you know.  Well you might dig into the gravel and see if it is starting to dry out below the high water line.  What ever really drys out will be a portion of bacteria that have dried out and therefore dieing.  See you want the draining of the beds to draw air down into them but you really don't want the media to dry out.

 

So as you run your tests, set yourself a little timer so you can rush out and dig into the bed to see if the gravel is drying out before the next flood cycle.  Of course as the spring goes on and the temperatures rise and humidity falls, the gravel will dry out quicker.

[halemart]

Have been testing this method...

 

My first solid state relays did not work for me.

 

Went to a standard relay, but now it trips my 5 amp breaker, so I got a 10 amp one on order.

 

Have this down to 5 hours a day the pumps are on.    I may start edging back up to longer times on to see how the plants react.   Planning on increasing the amount of time when the real heat kicks in.

[TCLynx]

At least you will have more sun when that happens.