Hey, I'm Paul Begue, AST systems designer. So we managed to put the small hobby size
system together. I want to point out that this is a coupled/ decoupled Aquaponics system. So you always want to have that option to decouple. So what I want to
do now is I want to go over all the parts and pieces and I want to make sure
that you understand what kind of goes into something like this and where are
the very important parts. Alright so we're gonna come a little bit closer, I'm
gonna go over everything starting with the fish tank. So this is 150 gallon fish
tank we had this on site so we didn't buy anything new. Notice there are a lot
of holes in it it's been used and for research purposes probably it's probably
a 10 year old tank. So then I sized sump tank so this is our sump tank. This is
our lowest point in the system. Now it's very important that when you size a sump
tank you want to make sure that it can handle any overflow or power outages. So
that's why the water level is very high in here right now.
Next thing we
have a very small water pump this is a 500 gallon per hour water pump which
pairs really nicely with our BBF XS 1000. This is a 1/2 cubic foot bead
filter so the beads are about here and okay so
water enters the bottom goes through the beads and then when it comes out- it is
really nice water for not just fish, but also for plants, free of solids and also
really high in nitrate. Alright so if we follow our outflow we split our flow.
okay? so right now this valve is all the way
open that means that all the water is running back to our fish tank now if I
open this one up a little bit, now we're not running right now but open this one
up a little bit I'm gonna be filling up this reservoir here for this tower
system. alright this was donated to us by aquaponics thailand by bob white
he's a distributor of ours in Thailand and we're evaluating this so
basically what this is it's a nice neat tower that it's got a reservoir in the
bottom and we've got a very small pump pumping water up through this Center
filling up all of these trays and then falling back down. now probably the
coolest part about this to finish the loop is where we are airlifting our
return water back into the fish tank so what I have to do is I have to match
this flow coming out of the bead filter and into this reservoir here into the
tower I have to match this valves flow with this air lift return okay and
that's something that we're gonna be playing around with to make sure that we
always maintain the high water level inside this reservoir so how do we do
how do we separate these loops we close this valve here and then our air lifts
we can also close the air going in so that all the water that's inside of the
reservoir will cycle on itself all right so girls for this system what we want to
be able to do is we want to be able to show you in a very small footprint we
can grow a lot of fish and a lot of plants can feed a single family maybe
two families and it's relatively inexpensive to do this type of work
right so as often as possible I want to point out use cinder blocks use strong
wood right pressure treated wood and use recycled materials right spend money on
things that are really important right pumps are important you have to have
your water flowing air pumps are important you need oxygen inside your
water the biofilter clarifier the bubble bead filter very very important for the
health of your fish your fish are driving the whole
system so you really need that filter to be operating very well so that your fish
are alive not just a lot but we want them thriving if they're thriving your
plants are gonna be beautiful lush lots of fruiting lots of flowering all that
stuff that you want so stay tuned for more videos on this system to come!