I finished fabricating my IBC system about 2 weeks ago. I filled it up with water and took a nice long piss in it to jump start the formation of the bacterial colony. Thats about as in depth as Im going to get on cycling the system on this post. Ill do an entire post on cycling very soon. This post will just be about the overall design.
This system isnt very complex. Its a pretty standard IBC system. I cut the top 12 inches off of the polyethylene tank and flipped it upside down. Then I cut the top section of the metal frame off with a reciprocating saw and used that as the grow bed frame. That left a bunch of sharp metal points exposed on the frame around the fish tank. To fix this and help with the overall look, I built a wood frame to go around the top. I used some pieces of wood I had left over and a couple hinges and made the fish tank cover. All the wood is treated with 100% pure Tung oil. This stuff is great and is all natural. You can find some information on it and order it here: http://www.realmilkpaint.com/oil.html
I have one 500 gph submersible pump and one 700 gph air pump going to 4 air stones (2 in the back and 2 in the front). With this pump I can flood my grow bed in less than 2 minutes. Most literature you can find on aquaponics says that it should take 8-12 minutes for your grow bed to flood on a bell siphon assisted flood and drain system. Its unclear if this is because that time frame is ideal for plant growth, fish growth of microbial growth or maybe its just because any faster than that and your bell siphon wont disengage. In my opinion, a higher water turnover rate seems like it would only benefit all aspects of the system. Which is why I run mine at 2 minutes and my siphon disengages every time. That is possible because on my awesome design ;)
The cap on the IBC is just a little too small for a 6 inch PVC pipe to fit into. This created a problem because because I am obsessed with symmetry and wouldnt settle with placing the siphon anywhere else in the grow bed. To cope with this problem, I made cuts with a miter saw that are 6 inches long and spaces every 1 inch. This gave the end of the media guard and funneling effect. I then drilled 4 3/8 inch holes on every tab starting at one inch from the end. When the modified media guard is placed in the lid of the IBC tote it makes a snug and fairly water tight seal. This creates an area directly around the bell of the siphon that is separated from the rest of the grow bed. So when the water level in the grow bed starts getting below the last hole on the media guard, the flow into the media guard is reduced but the amount of water the being pulled from the siphon remains the same. This causes the water column within the media guard to drop at a rapid rate and causes the siphon to suck a large amount of air. This prevents the system from getting caught in limbo and allows the siphon to disengage every time even with an extremely fast flow rate into the grow bed.
I put a tee on the return pipe going back into the fish tank. During testing this proved to return water at a faster rate than with just a single pipe. It also causes more surface agitation and therefor aerates the water better.
I decided to go with a fish water distribution grid going into the grow bed. This will help evenly distribute nutrients to all areas of the grow bed. This will allow the solids to be broken down by bacteria and worms at a higher efficiency because they wont be accumulating in one area. It will also help to reduce the development of anaerobic areas in the grow bed. I simply ran the 1 inch PVC pipe around the perimeter of the grow bed and drilled 1/4 inch holes every couple inches.
I will be stocking with fish in the very near future as well as planting the grow bed with its first crop. I am also designing a solids filter to integrate in-line prior to the grow bed to allow me to have a very high stocking density. I will be doing separate posts for all of those so make sure to check those out.
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