Today we will see the maintenance of your aquaponics water pump
When we grow food in aquaponics we are growing a whole living ecosystem. To do that we can use natural materials or plastic and other artificial equipment. To be very honest, even the aquaponics enthusiast like me who focus on using natural materials such as wood are still using liners, pipes and plastic pumps. Those artificial are not looking great but they also have an environmental impact. First they need some energy to be produced and then to be recycled (when possible).
Aquaponics water pump maintenance leading to sustainable food
If we want to produce sustainable food we must take those parameters in consideration. The idea is to minimize the quantity of resource necessary to produce 1kg of food. In order to reach a better level of sustainability we must take care of the equipment and make it last longer.
When it comes to aquaponics water pump maintenance, it is very important to clean the filters and the rotor. The pump must rotate freely without any obstruction and should be able to suck the water without too much resistance.
the little extra part
This is where most aquaponics keepers generally stop but there is another thing to do in order to preserve your water pump… The water is generally pushed through a pipe and raised from a fish tank (or sump tank) to a grow-bed. In warm conditions the inside of the pipe will offer perfect conditions to bacteria. Bacteria can form a “biofilm” which is a micro ecosystem composed of a multiple of bacteria. This biofilm can reach several millimetres of thickness and therefore significantly reduce the pipe section. This will increase the pressure in the pipe and have a negative effect on the water pump, reducing its lifetime.
In order to make the water pump last longer we must clean the inner section of the pipe. To do so we use some specific brush equipped with a long piece of metal and allowing to push the brush through the whole pipe. Doing this once in a while will remove the bacteria biofilm and allow the water to circulate freely. This action will not only increase your water pump lifetime but also improve the efficiency of the whole system.
You will probably be interested to discover Jonathan’s six steps to build and manage an Aquaponics system. Click here to access for free! Thanks and good reading 🙂
