Aquaponics USA Plumbing

Here’s a close-up of the Water Rings (more like water squares) which serve to deliver water to the Grow Beds and the five proven Bell Syphons that are placed in the middle of each Grow Bed. The plumbing is the real nitty-gritty of your system.

These particular stands are designed to support 2,500 lbs. per pair which is more than enough to safely and securely support your Grow Beds. Once your Grow Bed is full of Grow Bed Media and water, it doesn’t budge. We’re real impressed with this Grow Bed table and stand design. The handy little shelf under them serves to hold your air pumps and all kinds of other things. We only sell these Family systems complete with tables and stands. The supporting table top has been carefully designed to grip the stand so the system is secure and safe.

The pictures of our systems you see on our Food Forever™ and specific system pages, are mock-ups with plastic stands of the actual system you receive when you place an order. Those pictures show the major components and the system design, but they do not show the pluming and metal stands.

This page shows you our old FFGS-50, which was the upgrade of the FFGS-40 with the extra Grow Bed, fully plumbed and ready for fish and plants. It will give you an idea of what the plumbing looks like in all of our Family Systems. Our Mini/Compact Systems will have a little different type of plumbing design; and those pictures are coming soon.

The plumbing is designed so from one side, it’s practically invisible. This FFGS-50 has five 11 square foot grow beds. Our new FFGS-50 has four 14 square foot grow beds for a total of 56 square feet of growing space. The above system is set up on our 8 ft. wide back porch. We have closed in that porch, insulated the roof and walls, installed grow lights and environmental controls and fired up a four-bed system with an extra 120 Gallon Breeding Tank in what we now refer to as our Growroom. Check out our new Video on our Aquaponics USA TV Chanel. Just click on our YouTube Channel link to your left.

Notice we said “proven” Bell Syphons. These syphons work like a charm. If your syphon is inefficient or fails, your system becomes unstable. This is where the rubber hits the road and where novices can run into trouble trying to design their own syphons. The black tubing in the foreground above is for overflow to the fish tank.

Here’s the side where the plumbing shows. These are the two Grow Beds on the left side of the fish tank viewed from our bedroom French doors. Notice the insulated table tops, which are designed to lock into the stands that are under all of the Grow Beds. These Grow Beds hold a considerable amount of weight, which is why we chose these metal stands to support them.

Here are two great views. The first is of the insulated table top; and the second shows some of the underbelly plumbing and the syphon returns.

We did not center our fish tank due to the fact that we only have 8 ft. to work with here and the fish tank is 6 ft. in diameter (320 gallons). So we parked the tank to one side toward our deck in order to allow us two feet of walk-around space on one side of it.

That’s why the drain hose curves into the tank instead of going straight in. When you purchase the FFGS-40/50, this curve will be a straight shot into the tank in our Assembly Manual; but we’ll be providing you with extra hose so if you need to make a curve like the one where the arrow is pointing, you’ll have plenty of hose to do that. This is a complete system that is partially disassembled for shipping and needs to be reassembled using your “Manual”.

$ 2895

Without Hydroton

FFGS-40

ADD TO CART

$ 3775

With Hydroton

ADD TO CART

FFGB-11

$ 429

Without Hydroton

$ 649

With Hydroton

This is the 4 Grow Bed System, FFGS-40. To get 5 Grow Beds you order this plus one more Grow Bed, the FFGB-10, together.

Here’s a long shot of the plumbing side of the previous FFGS-50 with the water rings, syphons, gate valves, bulkheads and manifold. The red valves are on the Grow Beds allowing you to adjust the water flow directly into the Grow Bed.

This system will grow quite a lot of food and represents the same number of grow beds and square footage as we have in our greenhouse. If you haven’t gone to our “About” page to see our videos yet, you can see what we grew in 50 feet of grow bed space last summer when our fish were tiny. This year that same space is producing many more vegetables because we are now running what is called “a mature system”. A system needs to be about one year old in order to reach maturity, which means your fish are producing enough nitrates to grow out even the most difficult to grow vegetables like tomatoes. Right now our greenhouse system is pumping out more tomatoes than we can eat. These are nothing like the tomatoes you buy at the grocery store that were picked before they were ripe. These are real tomatoes with real tomato flavor. You can purchase this exact system or one with four grow beds right here or get more details by Clicking Here.