Solids Filtration

By TCLynx, on December 19th, 2010

In Aquaponics, Flood and Drain gravel beds make really good filters, not only for bio-filtration but also for solids filtration.

However, the water going into my water fall tank was direct from the pump out of the in ground fish tank.  I wanted to add some filtration before the water went into the waterfall tank.

top inlet filter Feb 27 2009

I had previously tried a “swirl” filter but my flow through it was too fast for most of the solids to actually settle out and I didn’t like having to dump the solids out of it every other day.  So I tried making another type of filter where the water would simply flow through a bin full of gravel and flow into the waterfall tank.  That idea didn’t work for long though and was clogged up and flowing over the top withing a few days.

Next I hooked up an upflow gravel type filter.  In this the water is pumped into the bottom of the bin and flows up through the gravel before flowing out of the bin.  This worked far better for cleaning up the solids in the water fall tank but didn’t really provide much growing space for the filtration.

lava rock in bottom

While the up flow filter did seem to work for the Aquaponics system I would prefer to use a regular flood and drain grow bed for most of my filtration.
upwelling filter April 16 2009

Any filtration where the water splashes in at the top risks clogging and overflowing as the media slimes up. I have seen this on grow beds with constant inflow in a single location. Timed flow to the beds seems to alleviate this trouble. Upflow filters don’t have the splash and overflow problem but they don’t have much aeration into the media.
upwelling filter full with gravel

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Aquarium Broke

By TCLynx, on December 20th, 2010

At some point I noticed that the Aquarium was leaking and I needed to do something about it. I took apart the aquarium carefully and painstakingly cleaned the glass of all silicone. Then my Mom and I siliconed the parts back together very carefully. Then had to wait while the silicone cured. Finally I was able to re-fill the aquarium, and it BROKE!!!!!

Lumber liner shelf tank

Lumber liner shelf tank 2

So, I decided to try building my own tank for the quarantine aquaponics system with some lumber and liner on the shelf unit where the aquarium had been. This did work for a while until the pressure of the water broke the shelf away from the wall.
Shelf tank with water broke shelf

Argh, for some reason I don’t think fate likes this location for a quarantine aquaponics system. I suppose the aquarium outside was just asking to fail eventually but I’ve not had much luck with other small tanks either. I did finally hook up another tank for small fingerlings.

Fingerling system

This one had a problem with the fish knocking the screens off of the outlet pipes and then the fish getting caught in the pipe. I even cut one fish up with the ball valve once. Not pleasant realizing I’d done that. Keep in mind that when you kill fish in a small quarantine aquaponics system, the water quality can go really poorly very fast. All the more reason to make sure the quarantine aquaponics system is very robust. I’ll have to go back to the drawing board on that one I guess.

I think the next version of the Aquaponics Quarantine system will need to be much bigger.

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More Big system changes

By TCLynx, on December 22nd, 2010

With the addition of the new Big CHIFT PIST fish tank, I decided to remove the waterfall tank and add a new grow bed in it’s place.

removed waterfall tank

Frame for new bed

This change to the aquaponics system will give a place to filter the excess water flow from the new fish tank and provide more filtration for the system overall. The new bed will hold about 200 gallons of gravel.

Liner installed

This bed will also give me a location to plant some bananas and papaya where they will hopefully not get too tall for the greenhouse.

gravel and bananas

I am hoping to flood and drain this bed by loop siphon into the sump tank right next to it.

New Bed Plumbing

Grow bed full

Later on I will find that this bed didn’t work so well for Aquaponics. First, it’s another lumber/liner bed which isn’t such a good idea (I hadn’t yet learned that lesson when I built this one though.) Also loop siphons are not as good for large grow beds with minimal fall to the sump tank. And finally, in Aquaponics, even a dwarf banana might become a beast and I wound up having to chop it down to put up the greenhouse plastic the next winter. This was my first somewhat deeper grow bed though and I do still like the idea of deep grow beds. They offer extra filtration and support of big plants.

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NFT Project

By TCLynx, on December 17th, 2010 Bracing and header tank for NFT pipes

setting up tubes

NFT stands for Nutrient Film Technique and is the method that uses the pipes or channels with the holes and plants set in them.  It is important to filter the Aquaponics fish tank water before sending it through NFT pipes, otherwise the fish poo and uneaten fish feed tends to clump up in the pipes and among the plant roots causing anaerobic, smelly conditions that are not very good for the plants, fish or relations with neighbors.

Cleaning up

For my Aquaponics system at that time, I had a pump in the monster bed that was controlled by a float switch. I set up the plumbing from that pump to go into a header tank above the pipes. That tank would fill up and I did my best to balance things so the tank would slowly drain between pump cycles and provide a continual flow of filtered water to my NFT pipes.

Most of my NFT pipes are 4? sewer pipe with 2 1/2? holes cut to hold my yogurt cup home made net pots (Next blog post will show off my methods with those.)

Header tank

Even with the 4? pipes, plants like basil can grow big enough to cause root clogging and overflows. Using NFT in Aquaponics requires regular checking of the plants and pipes to make sure everything is flowing well and do what pruning or plant removal is necessary to keep things working right.

I find the pipes to be good for small plants and herbs. They are at an easy height to inspect and harvest. Keep in mind that long runs of NFT tend to heat up aquaponics water and can leave it depleted of dissolved oxygen so don’t go running super long distances with just one flow of water.

Removed sump walk

The New look

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