Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello everyone,

Am completely new to aquaponics.

Live in central Louisiana.

I’m preparing to start a small system and was looking for feedback on best setup using two IBC totes.

Am I best off simply making two chop and flip system as shown in pdf file?

Or would it be much better to use just one IBC as a FT and getting 3 growbeds?

How necessary are swirl filters and solids pumps?

Does the basic chop and flip as shown in the pdf file work well as it is, or will I be looking to improve upon it?

Thank you in advance for any experience and knowledge you can share.

Not sure what to tell you as far as what the best IBC setup would be. There are advantages to doing it either as two separate chop and flip systems or as a single system with three grow beds. You'll be able to grow more using one fish tank and three grow beds but you might learn more by doing it the other way and playing with the systems.

Did you mean solids pumps or solids filters? If you have enough grow bed wetted surface area to act as filtration for the fish in your system then you don't need any additional solids or bio filtration. If you put a heavy fish load in for the amount of filtration you have, that is when you start to need additional filtration in the form of solids filters and biofilters.

If you meant how necessary is a solids pump, It's not absolutely necessary but it gives you some piece of mind knowing that a small piece of media won't stop the pumps impeller by getting stuck in the wrong spot. If that did happen it could result in a fish kill.