Aquaponics System Feedback | Ask The Aquaponics God

I have one question, whay not added the biological filter in aquaponic.

Excellent brother

What about the ratios? Fish stocking/feeding to biofilter to planting surface area?

What kind of liner should I used in my Aquaponics system

This is backwards to be sure… I see he's trying to make a CHOP and yes, deepwater, and drip beds work best due to the constant flow of water. HOWEVER, his mechanical filtering drip system should come before the deepwater growbed and he should also have an initial solids filtration system, like a simple swirl filter just out of the fish tank. Ideally he should have a four tier system with either the pond being the highest or second lowest.

Type #1: Pond at highest tier. Drill hole at bottom of tank o that the refuse at the bottom gets sucked out. One can put a sponge filter over the output to make sure no fishies get flushed down the drain. Have a u shape in drain pipe that goes up to about 2" lower than the highest desireable water level in tank. This way you will never drain the WHOLE pond out if there are any leaks in system. You CAN add an overflow drain to this setup as long as you add it by using a T on the inside of the tank where the riser's height is as high as the max water level that you can have in your tank.

After the U pipe, redirect down a couple of inches before connecting to a swirl bucket. for every inch difference between the water level of your pond and the input to the swirl tank you gain 0.04psi. Make the swirl tank water tight and the output should be 2" lower than the input and the overall depth of the swirl tank should be approx 4times+ the height difference between the input and output to ensure the solids stay at the bottom and don't get sucked back out to the drip system.

The output of the swirl container goes directly to the top of your bucket filled with lava rocks. You COULD cut holes into the sides of the drum and plant water loving stuff to take advantage of the surface area, however, you'll need to have something under your drums that will redirect any overflow/leakage into your lowest bin, the deep water bed. Your pump is located in this bin and you'll need to make sure that if the pump fails, you don't overflow your DWB. The pump goes directly back up to the pond, so make sure you get one that has the correct head height. I'd make it at least half a foot higher than the height difference between pond water level and your deep water bed. This way you have some extra water flow which helps push solids towards the drain and the fishies love it.

Type #2: Pond at second lowest. Same U pipe drain and the swirl bucket is the lowest point. But one now needs a catch basin that has depth level the same as the swirl bucket bottom and top level as high as the pond. Output from the swirl canister fills up the catch basin and the pump moves the water up to the drum filled with rocks and that in turn drips into the Deep Water Bed. A pipe overflow from the bed then returns the water back down to the pond.

I agree with you about covering the deep water bed as well. I'm going to add chickens to my farm so having algae just adds another home made food source for them, but unless one is willing to keep cleaning algae out of pipes for that little extra food value, it is prolly for the best to eliminate any and all places where water is exposed to light.