Aquaponics - Simple Set-up, Part 2.

As mentioned in my update of the original post, I realised that I will need a sump tank so that means the original set-up will not work.

The reason is this:

1) My original fish tank is 128 litres, whereas my 2 growbeds are 103 litres each.

2) Assuming water will fill 40% of the growbed when it is filled with gravel or Hydrotons, each growbed will draw about 40 litres of water from the fish tank.

3) With two growbeds, that will draw 80 litres of water from my fish tank. That means the fish tank will be left with 48 litres of water.

4) So either I stick with one growbed or I add a sump tank to the configuration.

And that's what I did.

I have an old IKEA Galant Table which I shall convert into the rack for the two growbeds. The A-shape legs allows you to adjust the height of the table.

I also had an old hole saw from Ikea for the purpose of drilling cable holes. And I drilled 2 holes for the drain pipes.

The drain pipes would later be fitted like this:

Then set-up the growbeds:

I drilled a small hole at the base of the stand pipe because if the Bell Siphon fails, it will still slowly drain out the water in the growbed.

 

I bought this water pump from a local fish shop:

 

 

 From the water pump, the hose goes to a t-joint: one end goes to the fish tank and the other goes to the 2 growbeds.

 I wanted to make sure the hose is secure and runs into the fish tank, so I inserted the hose through a 25mm PVC elbow. And the elbow is in turn cable tied to the fish tank.

The excess water will flow out through the bulkhead on the left back into the sump tank. The fish tank will have constant water level.

The hose going to the growbeds are secured by a 3-way PVC joint that is again cable-tied to the table.

and then at the edge of the growbed it is guided by an elbow. I drilled holes on one side of the elbows, and then 4 holes for the cable ties to go through the edge of the growbed.

Then the hose is again split through a t-joint so that I can distribute the water into each of the growbeds.

At each end of the hose going to the growbed, I added ball valves (US$4.00/pc) to control water flow rate. Since my water pump is 2,800l/hr, I think this is needed. Anyway, I will do full system test next week and we will see.

Here's a view of the 2 growbeds.

and the full system looks like this:

I think this is as compact as I can get it to be.

Since this set-up is in an apartment, I will get a room divider to block the set-up from the view when people walk into our apartment.

Maybe something like this:

That's it. Next week will be full system test.

Happy Farming.