by scheepers
Aquaponic window garden with aerator/pump mod
5:23 am in Completed Window Farms, International, made from scratch (without a kit), posts with pitcures!, Projects in Process, pumps, R&D-I-Y, Uncategorized, Water flow by scheepers
This system was built in less than a day and additionally:
- Combines aquarium aeration with the air pump.
- Pushes water up 202cm (6.6 feet) with a 1.5 litre/hour pump (I don’t think pump size matters at all here, this one cost R60, or about $8).
- Moves roughly 100-120ml in 6 hours (I think that’s how much I slept last night).
- (Accidental) varying dripping time.
- You can probably run many ‘percolators’ off one pump by splitting the air feed, or using a very long aeration stone.
- The system runs very quiet (The air pump makes more noise than the gurgling).
- The top 500ml bottle can be converted to a baffle or silencer quite easily.
- It may possibly even be converted to a non aquaponic pump?
- No pump-strain, T-junctions, valves or needles (or things that look like them, I’m a wuss, ok?)
Until I found window farms and ‘bubble pumps’, I had a set of daisy chained bottles hanging from the top of my window, with no idea how to get water circulating, or even how to integrate a fish tank properly. You all have done such amazing work that got me up and running in almost no time!
- Not sure how I’m going to build a filter (perhaps inside the aeration chamber?) [Update: see new percolator design below]
- What fish to get.
- What plants to plant.
- Getting time to do my actual job
Here’s a diagram of the system:
If anyone is interested, I’ll start on a how-to.
Version 0.0 of the aeration perculator um... thingy
Percolator pump/aerator thingy v1.0
Single grow bottle (Still needs to be painted)
Grow bottle stack and tank
Updated perculator with filter (Jan 3 2012):
Impressive! (-:
A small increase in security would be to put the pump above waterlevel instead of on the ground.
Great diagram!
Thanks
Cool. Great job getting it to work.
Thanks you guys.
I’ve totally eliminated the gurgling noise by adding a micro sprinkler head to the top drip pipe
I made something very similar (but much bigger) that worked like a geyser. Something for you to try is to put the bottom thing for a wine siphon tube at the bottom of you percolator thingy. It is like a little upside down bottle cap that sticks into the tube. This will hold the water and release it in gushes up the tube. You might get a huge increase in pumping if you try it. The bottom of the siphon tube for wine is to stop the tube sucking up muck off the bottom when you “rack” the wine.
Brian
He there,
I’m going to try the system as you designed it since I could not find the needles, I’ll let you know if it’s working here later this day
Awesome! Can’t wait to hear what you think
ok, I’ve learned a couple of things
1. I need to have more patience
2. your system works over here as well
3. the hight of the reservoir needs to be sufficient (at the moment I have air comming from the bottum of the botle in the reservoir.
I’m going to test it against a T junction system
Fantastic. I’m excited to hear about your results!
Oh, by the way: it does let air out occasionally from the bottom of the bottle. This happens when the system has overloaded itself with too much water in the tube. Watch the droplets when that happens, and you’ll se that it corrects itself after a while. If it doesn’t, alter the length of the downpipe in the reservoir bottle.
[edit:] I’ve found that the longer the down pipe, the more the bubbling happens. My current system uses about 3cm, and doesn’t bubble out at the bottom at all.
hello,
I’ll try your system, but instead of using an air pump I’ll use an aquarium-pump thats pump water and mix it with air. Can I directly send water+air in the tube ? Or do I have to make the system with bottle upside down ?
(Sorry for my bad english I’m french)
Thanks
If you use a waterpump, the whole airlift system is redundant, apart from aerating the aquarium…
You can send the water+air directly up the tube, but I’m not sure if using a water pump would have the right rate of flow. You may flood your grow beds.
Is your pump adjustable? How do you plan on aerating your aquarium?
You could perhaps split the output of the pump to supply water to the grow beds and another branch to just flow back into the fish tank from a slight elevation. That may solve both issues.
I’m planning to do that with a ball-aquarium with golden-fish, and I think I don’t have to aerate it ?! (I had golden-fish years ago and I had never aerate the aquarium).
I’ve got another problem : I live in caribean, so the temperature is always 28 or 30°C (82-86°F), I’m planing to put my aquarium inside the house and the window farm outside and connect the both with the Up and down tubes, but I think that the external water will heat the aquarium water and kill my fish ?
Ok. What did you have in the aquarium with your fish? Plants?
The drip rate is quite slow, so I’m not so sure that the outside water will raise the temperature enough to kill your fish… You may have more of an issue with evaporation, though.
Try it out and post your results. I’m curious to read what happens.
No nothing in the aquarium, just some rocks.
Yes I will post my results !
Thancks
Hi again,
I have a few comments about the perculator system after building one.
1st one is a mistake I made, I made the tubbing going into the botle a bit to long so it curled a litle and took in to much water which would actually bock up the entire system since it could not build up enough pressure before bubles came out on the bottum side of the botle, now I use 3 to 4 centimeters
2nd is piece of advice: the hight difference between the wattersurface and the top of the botle determines the zero point pressure in the system, so if this height is increased the system will start with a higher overpressure and will start moving up water quicker. so simple use a smaller botle for this, at the moment I’m using a 0.5 liter botle and it simply works better.
3th a piece of practical advise, instead of divers weights I simply glued the botles to the bottum of the container.
So I hope this is some helpfull advice for other people building out there
ok, I have to apologize for my previous post, the 1 liter botle with about 8 cm of zero point pressure actually works best over here while the 0.5 liter botle is actually stalling constantly due to to much water intake
I like the look of this idea. Drawn by curiosity, the simplicity, and I love aquaponics!, have tried a couple of experiments myself.
Question? A. The size of the tubing leading up from the bottom percolator bottle must be of a maximum width? as I have found that the surface tension breaks and the water drops back to the reservior.
B. What is the air “Pressure” as opposed to the capacity/minute of your pump (mine is only 0.012 Mpa). At a depth of only about 10cm air flow stops completly! so I cant take much advantage of the zero point pressure by placing the outlet lower.
Oops pressed the wrong button and signed off too soon.
Any help with this would be GREATLEY appreciated.
Cheers!
I’m having an issue at the moment… when the water gets to a certain saturation of nutrients, the pump stalls. It almost looks like it is foaming in the upward pipe.
Perhaps there is too much of a pressure buildup? Has anyone run into a similar problem?
@Ciaran, 0.012 MPa is 120 hPa which should work under the oposing pressure of 1.2 meters of water, so maybe you’re losing pressure on the second exit of the pump
@Scheepers, with pump, do you mean the airlift system? or only aquarium pump? I don’t have experience with nutrients yet but I had it foaming due to some cleaning agent against algies but the system worked quiet well with foam
right now I’m having trouble again with the system stalling due to to much water intake so I’m going to shorten the inlet and if that doesn’t work I’m going to build in a smaller diameter tube leading out of the botle
Apologies, yes I mean the airlift system
[Update]
It’s working again!
It took scaling down to a
500ml1l(see comment below) bottle and cutting out some of it to lower it further into the tank (Thanks @Bram).To compensate for the extra water challenge, the uptake pipe is now less than 1cm…
See the new percolator design at the bottom of the images (Somehow I can’t add images to comments…)
@Bram Thanyou. Some tighter tubing and better conections got the pump belting out air at far better depths. And the experiment sent water flying all over the garden, great for the kids when its 30DegC here at the moment. Cheers.
@Bram: Yup the 500ml bottle stalls too… Woke up to a pleasant bubbling noise this morning.
Remade the new percolator design with a 1l bottle and it seems to be working again.
He Scheepers, I think we might be trying to build something not entirely fit for this purpose, I’ve just watched the following youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKtB1YKoMxk which shows a lot more watter flowing up then what I would ever expect from the system you’ve thought of
By the way, right now I have a T junction under water with a 1-way valve on the water inlet and it moves up about 1 liter per hour and it hasn’t stalled at all.
I have to say, I liked working on your Idea but right now it’s time te actually start growing some plants
if you gain some new insight in to the perculator system I’d love to hear about it!!
Hey Bram,
I’ve got mine working 100% now, and it moves enough water for six grow bottles – which is all I can fit into my window, and still keep it reasonably see through
There are some sprouts coming up already and the spring onion I rescued from my (failed) veg garden in the back has been surviving for almost a week. Now that the system is running, they seem to be recovering and starting to thrive!
The aeration seems to be working – the fish seem quite happy, but I cant be sure because their smiles are difficult to catch
The filter pads are also starting to gather dust and muck so it seems to be working as well!
I’ll let the system run for a while, and then post some more pics and any other results I may find.
Thanks to all, you’ve helped me get this system working and non-stalling!
thank you! it just happened to me that my t-valve setup on my aquaponics system stopped working, and i do not know why.
i will certainly try your system tomorrow, looking forward to it! how high does your setup pump water? greetings martin
Hi Martin.
I eventually settled for a combination of the perculator and the t-piece as the perculator pumps way less water on its own…
I’l post a diagram soon as well as updated pics!
@Bram: You were right
ok thanks for your answer, it leads to a question
ive done the t-piece thing too, and it worked so far. i have a 10gallon tank with crayfish in them, and the t-piece air lift worked quite well: i used a one-way valve on the water intake too, and one on the air-intake to prevent water going into the airpump. it moved about half a liter over night, was silent and easy.
BUT, over the weekend the system was unattended and it stopped working! i tried alot yesterday, i replaced the t-piece, all valves and blew through the tubing, filled it up with a syringe but nothing helped. it just wont suck water anymore. i guess that the water pressure is not big enough or theres an error in my design that prevents the water from going in by water pressure alone. any suggestions? i even tried building a new one with shorter rising pipe but it doesnt work either.
ok i got my t-piece airlift working again, placed it outside the tank and took a piece of airhose, sucked a siphon in it and again it drops. this should last.
Can you do this system with several percolators so as to be able to do more plants with it eventually?
I am going to try and build my first air lift.
My children, 7years and 5 years, are helping and trying to understand the diagrams I’ve printed for them
Fun for the whole family.