Flood and drain cycle help for aquaponics

[Sweater76]

Hi from Australia,
Question on flood and drain cycle.
Firstly,
I’m running a small aquaponics system as a test run, later will upgrade to a much larger scale
It’s outdoors, I’ve got 7 gold fish in it.
Large scale will go in garage and I’m going to run 2 or 3 1000 watt HID grow lights and bigger eating fish native to Australia.

Plants I’m growing are,
Auto blue dream and a mango reg, plus a few kale plants which are coming out later, I put them in to test the system and see if it grow quickly, surprisingly it’s amazing and now I’m hooked on aquaponics, I use to dwc, aquaponics is winning at the moment by a few things, but that’s my personal experience.

My question
At the moment I’m running a cycle that’s,
Every hour, 1 x 15 minutes flood and drain, 24 hours.
I’ve been told to change it to
2 x 15 minute cycles every 1 hour, 6am to 6pm then have 1 x 15 minute cycle at midnight.
Is this right?? Or what would you suggest?

I’ve posted pictures so you can see what stage I’m upto
This is week 5

[HappyHydroGrower]

@Sweater76

Or what would you suggest?

Since flood and drain are all different shapes and sizes, it’s more a matter of trial and error. Many different schedules you can run. As seedlings, you may can get away with less waterings. But, as they grow older, of coarse more water needed.

@Myfriendis410 @peachfuzz @db may have some thought or know somebody that does.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
They look awesome! Good job!

[Myfriendis410]

That’s been my experience as well.

[borialis]

It’s a balancing act between dried crispy and drowning. Good luck!