3 Easiest DIY Aquaponic Systems Builds 

I'm glad the vid's have helped some James. Have fun with the build when the time comes mate. 👍

Nice one DNA39. 👍

Cheers mate. 👍

Glad it was helpful!

No problem 👍 Hope the build goes smoothly when the time comes.

Hope they continue to do well through the cold mate. Cheers Brian.

Me alegro que te haya ayudado Fabián. (Google Translate)

I have a water tower for exactly that purpose. 🙂

There are a few folks I know of that are running systems like this. 👍It would require decent footings for the distribution tank & enough available height which is why I haven't played with the idea as of yet. I prefer to talk about things I have experience with directly. Are you looking at building yourself?

@@RobsAquaponics Oh yeah that makes sense. Do you know anyone with videos? For the longest time I just assumed it was a bad idea because I didn't see anyone doing it. But I see how those infrastructure issues could be a limiting factor. I was going to build one but when the pandemic hit pvc costs went up 10x so it became too expensive for me. I had a small 3 tier shelf system in the basement with guppies in order to play with concepts. I'm going to bring that back soon and use it to run a microgreen/seedling operation.

@@insAneTunA That's awesome! what did you use to build your water tower?

@@RobsAquaponics I can tell you what I did. I made a wooden rack. And at about 1.8 meter I installed a relative small standard pond filter but I removed all the internal filtration elements. So basically it is just an empty bin but with all the standard connections for the pipes. And I pump the water from my sump tank into that bin and from there gravity feeds my 4 growbeds. As long as I don't pump ridiculous amounts of water it can easily feed my 4 growbeds with water. If I pump too much water it can theoretically overflow that bin. But I don't even come near those amounts of water. I made it in such way that all the growbeds always get an equal amount of water. Basically the gravity fed water pipe that runs from my "water tower" to the water outlets for the growbeds, is situated in a lower position as all the outlets for the growbeds. So as long as everything is perfectly level each outlet gets an equal amount of water. But to be sure and to be able to tweak it I also installed a ball valve at each individual outlet. But I never really needed to use those valves because I have a variable pump, and I can regulate the amount of water that goes to my "water tower". My pump is the AquaForte DM-10000 Vario. It is much more efficient and it uses a lot less power as a regular water pump. They are sold in different sizes and capacity. At max capacity my pump can pump 10.000 liter per hour. It has a display which can also show the wattage that the pump is using at that moment. My pump is using only 40 watt, all year long. But I also use the pump to feed another filter that is situated at a lower level from my water tower. At max capacity it would use around 80 watt. It has an automatic shutoff if for some reason all the water has drained from your sump tank. It also has a pause button, so you don't have to unplug the pump if you want to do some maintenance or clean some filters. And when you start it up again it goes back to your last used setting, and it has a slow start so that you do not get too much pressure at startup. And you can install it in a dry and wet situation, as long as it is installed below the water line. I have it for several years now, around 6 or 7 years or so, and I never had any issues with it. It looks small, but it is a lot more powerful as all my previous pumps, while it is using a lot less power as all my previous pumps. Which was an important factor for me when I bought the pump. My only regret is that I didn't buy the one size bigger pump, because now I know that I could have set it at the lowest setting and that would have used even less power compared to the pump that I have now. And I used a too large diameter pipe, which they didn't specify at the moment that I bought the pump. Now they specify what size pipe you must use. But it is not really an issue. I also made a drain with a valve in that water tower bin, so that when needed I can clean the bin and drain all the heavy solids from the bottom of the bin. Usually I clean it once or twice a year. But at least once a year at every start of the season. It also prevents fast clogging of the growbeds. I don't want too much sand or too large bio mass particles inside my growbeds. And because I use gravity I only need a single pump for my entire system, which makes things a lot less complicated, and much more fail proof. That's because I don't have to worry about different flow rates from different pumps, or that one pump fails for whatever reason while the other pump keeps pumping. And not a single pipe or valve is under pressure, so that automatically eliminates other possible failures. Having a "water tower" was the most practical and economical option for me. Otherwise I would have needed to use 2 different pumps to make my system work. And here in the Netherlands electricity is very expensive. Right now 1kWh costs a little more than 1 Euro or US dollar. But before the illegal Russian war it was around 0,30 cents per kWh. Which was still not very cheap.

I see biofilters as a bit of an extra backup. Not needed if you have enough media in the system to hose the bacteria required to process the ammonia load generated by the fish. The biofilter converts ammonia dissolved in the water where as the solids filter is collecting solids. Hope that helps some.

A proper iAVs system runs on a timer that floods & drains the beds. 👍 I'm currently working on another video shot at Owen's place that is just looking at the sand bed side of the system there. Hope to have it out in a week or two. I ran my DRZ in a shallow layer of water & had sand in the base to wick the water up to the soil. I have seen others flood up to just below the soil layer & drain it out like a normal flood & drain bed. I'm not sure which would work best to tell you the truth.

Thanks 😁 I made them all myself using getpaint.net & Davinci Resolve editor (also a free version available) to make them.

Hi Gauthier. Sorry I missed your comment. This playlist may help with some of the information you need, ru-vid.com/group/PLBcWprMIwYYj8zCdbSzPJOR3HRXpxuBwf & I also have an online guide available for purchase as well if that interests you, bit.ly/AquaponicsBeginnersGuide Cheers & all the best with your build when the time comes mate. 👍

Glad it was helpful!

Hey Kristina. The biggest issue is how hard it would be to clean the substrate at the base of a tall tank. The issue with the solids is that they can coat the roots of the plants causing growth issues. It's not really an issue in media beds as the biota/compost worms in there will eventually break them down. It's more an issue in NFT & DWC set ups where the roots are suspended in the water with no media. I hope that helps some & sorry for taking a while to respond.

The nutrients rich water is split between both so will eventually make it to the plant side. I've run my systems this way for years with no issues that I can see with plumbing them like this.

This video goes through how you can feed naturally occurring bacteria to set up a nitrogen cycle in the system Chris, How to Cycle An Aquaponics System ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-kmxfI_fkmtc.html

Hope that helps mate.

It depends on the system I think SO. If you're running only DWC or NFT it might pay to place a mechanical fines filter after the RFS to prevent fine solids building up in the beds or on the roots of the plants.

It wouldn't work too well Alex. The fish load would be fairly low meaning that there wouldn't be a lot of nutrients for the plants. I have seen folks try but the veg always look fairly sad.

Sump tanks help to make sure that the fish tank always has a constant height of water & never gets drained. You can pump straight from the fish tank if you like, I prefer not to.

It can do but you will need to manually clean it out of the media when it builds up or it can cause health issues with the fish.

👍👍🙏

That is covered in the full video. 😉 The link below will take you to that position. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-0QQA5BpWKec.html Cheers.

😁👍

From the fish tank?

Disease issue primarally. Fish disease doesn't pass on to humans where bird ones can. 👍 If you compost the fish waste first you could use that in a bioponics style system.

Wondering the same thing.

All my systems you've seen on the channel have been split flow. The "shitty water" is filtered by settler & in the case of this example a fines/bio filter. If you run media grow beds then you have a biofilter. 😉 The bio filter converts the ammonia to nitrate & folks that run straight DWC or NFT need one to do that job for them. You can separate the bed side & run it as an aquaculture system if need be. You can expand by adding extra beds & increase pump to provide a great flow rate. Watching the full video might help some & the link below will take you to the split flow section of the video, ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-0QQA5BpWKec.html

@@RobsAquaponics Thank you for your answer!

Apparently so 😉👍

Give him a medal.

🤦‍♂️

It's rather easy once you get your noggin around the water flow & how that helps the different parts of the system thrive.👍👍 Cheers Mitchell.