Another reason loop siphons beat bell siphons

If you are just getting started with aquaponics, you are probably reading all you can about the miracle of the bell siphon.

Well, they arent miracles they are physical science in action and while they do fall in the nifty, keen-o, fine-o category we have found several problems with them.

Add one more to that category.........root intrusion from the grow bed!

We recently stepped out of town for a little over two weeks.  We had someone periodically peek in on our systems and feed the fish a few times.  We were shocked when we got the panicked phone call that one of the systems was over-flowing on the grow bed and loosing water in the fish tank.  While we had a good bit of rain in our absence and that might explain an over-all higher water level we do have overflows installed to take care of heavy rain.  Also, rain wouldnt explain why we would loose water from the fish side of the system.  What fun to troubleshoot from 1500 miles away!

Every thing was humming when we left town.  The plants were uber happy and the fish appeared to be happy (hard to tell when they are smiling) so all should have been good. What happened?

Well, the plants were so uber happy that they grew like crazy and even though we had the bell siphon guarded, the roots grew into the siphon itself.  The entire thing was so totally clogged with roots that the siphon could no longer drain.  Now you know it is a serious root blockage if water, one of the most persistent and powerful forces on earth couldnt make it through that root ball!

So, we will develop a new guard to protect the bell siphon from roots.  But, this has only reinforced our decision to stick with loop siphons on all of our other systems.  The design of the loop siphon does not allow for root intrusion and all of the other systems utilizing this design had no problems with roots.

So, bell = bad
Loop = good

Introducing New Closed Loop Aqua Farming Blog

To better define and provide information on aquaculture and aquaponics, I have begun a new blog that will focus on the topic of Closed Loop Aqua Farms. Where land based aquaculture is integrated with aquaponics and other farming methods designed to make maximum use of resources and farming bi-products. The new blog is titled Closed Loop Aqua  Farms. It can be found at this link

I will continue to post information here that is more specific to Aquaculture only particularly intensive land based farming using water recirculation systems. Of course recent and relative news will be blogged on both sites where appropriate.

This should help provide my readers with more more information that is better presented.

The new blog will focus more on the topic of aquaponics and poly-culture farm scenarios.

Closed Loop Aqua Farming Blog

The Image below is an illustration of the Closed Loop process that I will be blogging on.

Thanks for visiting. I hope you enjoy reading my stuff. If you do tell a friend about it!