Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey guys,

New guy here, trying to put together my system. I have three 55 gallon barrels that I want to cut in half and use for grow beds.

Being a beginner, going to raise some goldies first and then some tilapia - what would be the ideal gallon tank size to run. Perhaps a ball bark...

150-200 gallons I was thinking?

what say you?

thanks,
Chris

its a bit of a loaded question really diego LOL

how long is a piece of string ?

to be honest you should go as big as you can in the tank department as larger water mass means more stability in temperature and chemistry ( PH ect)
some one else might be able to tell you the minimum you could support with the amount of GB volume you have there , i woult go bigger than what ever they say if you can

Hope that helps

Theoretically you only need half the volume of the growbeds (1.5*55=82.5gal of fish tank). But like Delgrade said - use the biggest tank you can get. It's better for the fish, total system stability and it gives you room for improvement and expansion. I have a 550gal fish tank with only 185gal of growbed, but that's a bit extreme.

The amount of fish you can stock is usually linked with the amount of growbed volume you have (because the growbeds take away the nutrients that the fish produce), providing that you have sufficient tank volume (in this case 82.5gal).
3x55gal of growbed could theoretically support an absolute maximum of about 35 big fish (500g), but that's with a mature system with everything perfect. I have about the same amount of growbed volume and I'm not planning on getting more than 25 fish in my system. I'm probably going to start with goldies, Koi and/or orfe, by the way.

Furthermore, your pump needs to turn over 20L/h per fish at the very least, at growbed head, but many go with the biggest pump that they can get (upside is it's easy to expand to a bigger system, downside is electricity bill).

Anyways, good luck, and I look forward to your progress!