Sri's New System

Sriprasad

Hi Everyone, i have been silent visitor for long time, and finally i have started working on my system. I love pictures, so here we go

Design planned
Tank Capacity - >3000 Ltrs
Fish Stocking - just Gold Fish as of now - Not decided on fish yet - thoughts welcome

My System Design

Hole in the Ground

Dirt !!! Dirt!!! Dirt !!!

Tank Walls in Progress

ccBear

Welcome thats a fair bit of work, good luck with it all. How about showing a drawing with a side view giving heights between each component of the system would help.

Sriprasad

ccBear wrote:

Welcome thats a fair bit of work, good luck with it all. How about showing a drawing with a side view giving heights between each component of the system would help.

Thanks for your kind worda ccBear.
Am not good in sketching. Let me try sketching to explain the best possible way

Here is stuff am planning

Fish tank

6ft in length
6ft depth 4 ft width approx 3000 litrs.

GB - ibc prices are high compared to barrel. So i hv decided to go with barrel for now. I have got one 300 litre barrel. Will post pictures asap

Sriprasad

Here are specs

Lmannyr

Add filters (radial flow filter or RFF, cloth, net, swirl, etc..) of your choice but add it before your first drop of water hits your grow bed. You may kick your self in the butt later if you don 't.

THAT IS ONE MASSIVE HOLE. Did you do by hand? Looks like rock! WOW and good luck. Hope all goes well. Look forward to your massive plants!!

Sriprasad

Here are the specs

Pic Taken Today

Finished Fish Tank

Measurements again

Was a Holding tank/bucket - Currently Sump - 150 Litre

Sriprasad

Lmannyr wrote:

Add filters (radial flow filter or RFF, cloth, net, swirl, etc..) of your choice but add it before your first drop of water hits your grow bed. You may kick your self in the butt later if you don 't.

THAT IS ONE MASSIVE HOLE. Did you do by hand? Looks like rock! WOW and good luck. Hope all goes well. Look forward to your massive plants!!

thanks for suggestion Lmannyr. Yes, am planning to filters ASAP. have 100 litre ready for the filter, thinking of RFF or swril not decided yet. Just now working on GB's, haven't decided on fish stock yet.

Yes, i did do the hole by hand. it took 8 weekends to do everything by hand. Dirt Removed from 7ft length, 4ft width, 4ft depth.

Now finished the tank, you can see pics in my above post

ccBear

Tank looks good, add RFF more efficient then a swirl filter. Mate I am colour blind and Red, Green, Brown are the common colour effected. This is just to let you know I could not clearly see the fiqures you were quoting around your photos. Cheers bear

Charlie

That FT is amazing. Have you used any supporting reo-bar in the build? A member here built a number of square brick tanks and unfortunately they broke apart.

dasboot

I agree fish tank looks great,have you sealed the cement with anything?

Sriprasad

ccBear wrote:

Tank looks good, add RFF more efficient then a swirl filter. Mate I am colour blind and Red, Green, Brown are the common colour effected. This is just to let you know I could not clearly see the fiqures you were quoting around your photos. Cheers bear

Added a new picture marked in black, hope it helps. Sure will read more about swirl

dasboot wrote:

I agree fish tank looks great,have you sealed the cement with anything?

Here in my place we seal the tanks with just cement. Once normal plastering of walls is done, cement is mixed with water and thick mix is applied on the walls to prevent leaking. wall becomes smooth after this, which prevents leakage. You can see diff b/w inner walls and exterior walls

outer walls not smooth as tank inner walls

Charlie wrote:

That FT is amazing. Have you used any supporting reo-bar in the build? A member here built a number of square brick tanks and unfortunately they broke apart.

After digging the hole, cement beam is made like the below picture, once beam is dry and strong , walls are built on top of it.

No rebar used in the walls, since we have 4 feet depth below ground and only 2feet above ground, it should hold good enough.

Its regular proven method we use in my place, which definitely has to hold up for mininum 30+ years

Sriprasad

Have question in Overflow , any help would be awesome

for SLO , i didnt drill the sides of the tank, just to ensure i dont disturb the tank build stablity. Instead, added Overflow bucket like in the picture below

One with RED handled valve is Inlet and other is the outlet.

Problem is outlfow is not as fast as inflow, and my sump gets emptied as quickly possible. am not able to ciruclate the entire tank for 3 times a day, do i need to increase the size of sump - Currently 150 litres

Pump - 1000 Ltr/h( will upgrade in future once i fix my SLO)

Inlet - 1inch Pipe
Outlet - 1inch Pipe

Tried with 2inch outlet pipe , not a notable difference

Filter I will be working on filter once i solve this SLO problem. Any thoughts how big the filter should be for 3000 Litre tank would be awesome
right now i have only about 7 gold fish of 2 inches each and 1 koi of > 3 inch

I am planning to stock as dense as possible in future, so my filter should be good enough to handle the bio load

Sriprasad

I have tried with 2inch SLO today, and Outlfow is better compared to 1inch SLO. What you guys think?

Do i need to increase to 3 inch or use two 2inch Outflow ?

Colum Black-Byron

Nice looking tank.

However, I should point out a few things. With the bare concrete, you'll run into problems with PH in your system , the water will suck out carbonates, which will send your PH sky high, and you'll have many issues with it down the track (nutrient lock out, potential fish deaths).

There are a few options you could use to combat it though.

First would be to recommend to paint it with a paint designed for ponds or potable water. Whatever is available in your area, the second is a Koi breeder trick, when it's setting, pour lots of hydrochloric acid into your pond, and keep it at a low PH for about a month, do daily checks, and keep on topping it up so all the acid eats up the carbonates on the surface of the concrete, then it should be stable enough.

With the overflow, if you've got a bridge siphon? I'd be paranoid with that design, something goes wrong, and you'll be draining the tank onto the floor, or it'll overflow from the tank. But yes, bigger pipe will move more water, if you double the pipe size, it gives x4 the amount of flow through the pipe.

And your sump isn't going to cut it, way too small at 150L. You'll need to be topping up every other day which will get annoying

And my recommendations to make it all easier.

Put the pump in the fish tank, pump directly to the grow beds, and let them overflow back into the tank. Simple & easy.

But again, nice job on the tank, looks awesome.

Sriprasad

Colum Black-Byron wrote:

Nice looking tank.

However, I should point out a few things. With the bare concrete, you'll run into problems with PH in your system , the water will suck out carbonates, which will send your PH sky high, and you'll have many issues with it down the track (nutrient lock out, potential fish deaths).

There are a few options you could use to combat it though.

First would be to recommend to paint it with a paint designed for ponds or potable water. Whatever is available in your area, the second is a Koi breeder trick, when it's setting, pour lots of hydrochloric acid into your pond, and keep it at a low PH for about a month, do daily checks, and keep on topping it up so all the acid eats up the carbonates on the surface of the concrete, then it should be stable enough.

With the overflow, if you've got a bridge siphon? I'd be paranoid with that design, something goes wrong, and you'll be draining the tank onto the floor, or it'll overflow from the tank. But yes, bigger pipe will move more water, if you double the pipe size, it gives x4 the amount of flow through the pipe.

And your sump isn't going to cut it, way too small at 150L. You'll need to be topping up every other day which will get annoying

And my recommendations to make it all easier.

Put the pump in the fish tank, pump directly to the grow beds, and let them overflow back into the tank. Simple & easy.

But again, nice job on the tank, looks awesome.

Thanks Colum for explaining in detail.

I was not aware of the carbonate issue, thanks for pointing me out, i will have check for pond safe points. On my list. ( I am in midplace dle of cycling the tank

)

Reg PH, Here in my water PH is always high, in 8ish. Even the rain water is 8ish when i tested. checked with two different electronic PH tester gave same results. in thetropical fish tank i have, the PH never goes down below 8, stays in 7.8 to 8, inspite of alll my efforts.

Am still not sure how i am goinn to battle the PH down the line. without going into lockout

Reg the pump in tank. Yes my initial idea was to keep the pump in the tank. But my fish tank depth is 6ft, all my worried is about incase any maintenance required , all i need to go for a swim.
and one more problem is my fish tank is 2feet above ground, so i have to raise the Gb's 3feet above ground to get the gravity feed back to the fish tank, thats the reason am trying CHIFT PIST. Any ideas on GB's height would solve this problem !!!

I will try more options and keep everyone posted about my success/failures others can learn from it.

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Sri's New System

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Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics