We’ve been a bit silent on progress on the Aquaponics recently. Not because stuff isn’t happening – quite the reverse! We’ve been so busy digging holes for the sumps and designing the growbed stands that we haven’t had a chance to tell you about it.
Here’s the hole for the large sump. It was only supposed to be 500mm deep but at the soil is so good and “easy” to dig I decided to take it down lower – to nearly 900mm. This should allow us to grow plants in the sumps as they’ll all get a bit more light.
And here’s the sump in place:
Having got a little over-keen on the digging for the main sump I then had to drop the other two shallow sumps to the same level. The’re not as deep though, so only about 400mm of digging for these ones:
And here they are, both in place:
Now I just have to connect the three sumps together and we’ll be ready for the growbed stands.
Looking back on it, digging these has been a labour of love. In a lot of ways I’d have been better off designing the system to have them all above ground. However my aim with this system is to get the most use as possible out of the space – so we’ll be trying to grow duckweed, water chestnuts, and possibly taro or wild rice in the sumps to give us true multi-level growing.
Maybe I should have just hired a little digger for the day. Or some Navvies!
3 comments
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October 23, 2009 at 11:29 am
Dragon Cotterill
I am wondering why the two smaller sumps are slightly offset. Wouldn’t this have an impact in your grow beds above them?
I look forward to seeing how you join them. Personally I would have joined them at the bottom, but this would involve digging a space between the sumps and would involve quite a bit of fiddly pipe work now that they’re buried. Of course an up-and-over type siphon would also work well provided that both sumps contain water. Or are they going to be piped seperately to the big sump at the back?
I know. So many questions. But enquiring minds want to know.
October 23, 2009 at 11:50 am
lepotager
It’s all part of the cunning plan!
I’ve pulled one of the sumps forward to give it more light, so that I can see what we can grow in it. Some Taro / Water Chestnuts / Wild Rice are in the running for that. The sumps will all be linked below ground with 110 mm pipe – just part of this weekend’s list of tasks!
Feel free to ask questions – they remind me that there are things in my head that haven’t made it to the blog yet.
November 17, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Dragon Cotterill
It finally hit me what might be wrong with your layout. There is no place where you separate out the waste solids from your fish tank.
You will get a lot of solid waste from your fish. This will all accumulate in the bottom of your tank. Not sure what your plan is to deal with this, but there are a number of things you could do to deal with it.
1) The simplest. You will need to siphon off this waste at regular intervals to avoid a lot of problems. Lot of manual work, but no extra cost.
2) Easy solution. Take your feed to the grow beds directly from the floor of the tank. Whilst it will take the waste out, you are only moving it as far as your grow beds where it will accumulate and evetually block the system.
3) Hard solution. Take the feed from the bottom of the tank into a separate smaller settling tank (Wheelie bin?) and take the outflow from the top into the grow beds. This means that the waste accumulates into one area, away from the fish, away from the plants, where it can be easily removed.
I’d be interested in hearing your solution to this.