Greetings from Melbourne, Australia

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Hi All,

Firstly I would like to thank the people involved in the several hundreds of posts I have read over the past few months to generate my interest in Aquaponics. I was looking for something fun for the family to do in the evenings together and my young children love fish.

So against some peoples posts I decided on a continuous flow system that feed from the bottom up and after some testing and modifications have a working system that pumps about 850L an hour.

1 x Fishtank
Nally Megabin 780L
Clear Pond Infiniti 4200 Pump - External Fully Encapsulated Pump (Overheating Protecting/Minimal Maintenance/Adjustable Flow Rate)
PondOne Claritec 5000UV filter

2 x Grow Beds
Nally Megabin 780L (2)
Water input from the bottom 25mm and 3 x 25mm out to the fishtank. Water flows out from GB at 859L hour.
50% gravel (20-40mm) in the bottom & 50% clay pebbles top as these bins are deep.
The flowing water is about 50mm or so under the top of the clay pebbles.

I have included some pictures and you can see 3 unused bins which i will plumb soon, but wanted to run the other 3 first to make sure everything was working ok.

I decided on a sub surface continuous flow system before making my design as this was my first attempt and was much easier to design and deploy imo. I have read many websites over the internet on this topic CF vs F&D.

If I flooded from the top my understanding is you risk the water not evenly spreading through bed and there has been plenty of reports in plenty of forums of blockages in beds. My problem was that because my beds are so deep I had to fill with gravel 50% meaning if I got a blockage I would have to more than likely remove just over a cubic metre of gravel and clay pellets to fix it. Because I pump from the bottom the pressure is quiet good to prevent it happening and the top can block in theory but I can dig 50mm down and clear it if it ever did block. My understanding is my bed will still work as a biofilter and the solids filtration I think will be quiet good given the size of the bed, mixed fill and filter. In theory I could actually backwash the setup anyway I guess if it did become a problem.

I have an aerator with battery backup ready but haven't decided to use it yet as the outflow seems to break up the surface tension of the tank fairly well and appears to oxygenate the water well, but proof will be in the plant growth and fish behaviour i guess. Given I am still cycling and waiting on the plant life to take off, I guess I will make a decision in the coming weeks. I have read several articles and posts on this exact topic no-one ever agrees, hence why I bought the aerator to begin with but prefer not to have to use it to keep operating costs down and prefer to use it as a power out aerator.

Ill post some more info in the coming weeks to let you know how it goes. Its a bit of fun and if I have to go flood and drain it is fairly basic mod from what i can tell.

Thanks again and if you have any advice or tips please feel free to send them through.

-J.