Aquaponics - Over Flow

I wandered out to my system last night, and had what is commonly known as an HSM.

It must stand for Holy Ship Moment.

One of my grow beds was flooded, and there didn't seem to be any reason why.

This is the scene a few minutes after the pump was switched off.

There was water on the floor, and the pump was sucking in small air bubble through the little tornado that had formed in the shallow water over the pump inlet.

I couldn't figure out what was going on, so did a search of the system.

I found this blockage in the stand pipe.

It was stuck really well, but eventually to hammer it out with a length of dowel and a hammer.

The culprit, shown here, was a small piece of scoria.

This growbed's media is scoria.

I also found bird droppings. I'm guessing a blackbird was in there throwing things around and looking for worms.

I do actually have an over flow pipe, added when I first built the little system, but the input flow from my bigger pump is much greater these days, so the little pipe wasn't up to the task.

Even so, it's a good thing it was there because I think it saved the day by delaying the disaster until I discovered it.

I'll upgrade the pipe to cope with the new greater flow, and I've put a PVC cap over the media guard so that particular issue cant happen again.





120 Things in 20 years think the last thing an aquaponics system needs is excitement when it comes to overflows.