Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Recently began reading up on aquaponics, and I'm hooked!

The absence of a true commercial aquaponics system in Ontario bothers me! We have so many empty warehouses that could be utilized for this kind of operation here in the GTA. And with trends leaning to local food (100 Mile diets) and vertical farming, I find my heart squeezed at the prospect of laying out a commercial venture in MS Paint lol.

Now in my image, I tried to paint the image of a cross section out, with big 2800 Gallon above ground polyethlyne tanks at the top of a industrial racking system. Think Home Depot or lowes. Heavy duty 'shelving' which CAN be configured to turn an empty warehouse space into a two story workarea. The tanks would be above their respective growbeds, in a system that would pump water to the fish tanks to a certain water level before activating the flush and dumping water down to the growbeds. I haven't considered pre-treating the ammonia'd water to pre-nitrify it, because I'm not thinking that far ahead yet!

As the water trickled down, the pump below would begin to fill the fish tanks back up with purified water. Flush and repeat.

The benefits I see with this system are:

• making the footprint of growbeds smaller by making their square footage vertical.
• bringing fresh vegetables and fish production to the city
• creating jobs
• educating people who can't tell me where their food actually comes from!

I fling this idea out to you, aquaponics veterans for comments and ideas!

Wouldn't it be mindblowing to walk into an old home depot and see green everywhere xP

The building I would use, would use LED lighting on a solar panel system with a green roof for added insulation.

With fish keepers in aquaria they often say "Heat the room not the tanks" so insulation would be big :3

I like it, do plants grow well under LED light? I think the design of the out side of the greenhouse/warehouse could also maximise natural light which is able to reach the plants like the new "growing power" green house design that was in the news.

You would need a very powerful pump to push water up the head from the bottom rack to the top but if footprint space is a limiting factor then the extra cost of running the pump may be worth it.

Not sure if the verdict is in with regard to growing plants under LED's...

And you'd need a lot of them... which means a very big, and very expensive solar array... good luck... hope you can pull it off...

Seriously though... if you have the capital required for that amount of solar array(s).... wouldn't it be cheaper to just do a standard greenhouse operation.... ala Growing Power...

The idea is to use buildings that would otherwise stand empty. If I used LED lighting it would use a fraction of the cost of electricity and also would require fewer maintenance changes. LED replacement bulbs for example, can be easily used in fluorescent light fixtures with their built in retrofit ballasts.

I suppose if I were to repurpose an otherwise unused space, I could replace the steel roof with one that was glass, but that might limit my insulating power, as well as my ability to harness the sun as a renewable resource. One of my goals is to bring a farm to the inner city, with as little a footprint as possible.

Another idea I had, was to use solar tube lighting, where mirrored tubes are fitted like skylights and used to direct natural light into an interior space. That could supplement LED lighting - which could also be geared for plant growth.

The great thing about LEDs is that I can pick the specific colour spectrum I want in light. Reds I believe are used for fruiting plants, and Blues are great for leafy plants. They also promote germination in seedlings.

I do know with the current setup in my picture that I would have to sort out how my pump would heave all that water up.

Heh, I actually had this thought of using a wind powered wheel to lift water up like they used to use for mills all those years ago. Wouldn't that be neat huh. Would also help aerate the water without using airpumps too.

Again, I'm just looking for ideas. This isn't something in the near future - I'm going to start out with a small high school based system first to see how wide of a curricular footprint I can construct

Yeah, but what I'm getting at is.... you see 96 LED arrays on ebay... for about $70US.... and I've seen NASA experiments that use 180 LED arrays... for a single potato plant...

I used LEDs for my seedlings this winter and they were great to supplement light from the window. I don't think they'd work for high light needs plants but OK for greens.

Instead of putting the fish tanks on top, you might look into using Nate's zip grow towers along with the sun tunnels or light tubes as well as some supplemental lighting.
http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7414

The towers would definitely save on the weight of gravel being carried up on platform shelving and the towers would be a handy way to take the greens to market, let people pick their own right at the market and then you take the tower back pull the insert and re-plant. Just plan enough extra towers that pulling some out to go to market isn't a problem and the help can re-plant extra towers to fill the gaps to keep a good rotation going.

With lots of towers you can simply use gutters to direct the flow back to the fish tanks. if you don't have enough room to hang them all over tanks.

I think (personal opinion here) for home/backyard type systems, the Zipgrow towers are more of an add on type thing but they are definitely a great idea for commercial scale growing of quick greens and herb crops. They are essentially a bio filter media for the fish system while also functioning as a modified vertical NFT system. It's great, it's vertical growing that doesn't require super filtering of the water before it goes to the towers.

With that system, does the water run down the towers from above, or is the water drawn up by cappillary action? I definitely like the idea of towers though. That's right up the vertical alley I was hoping for!

I'm also thinking about how a commercial system could sustain an educational tour program, where kids learn about the relationships and maybe take home a small sampler of fruits and veggies with a brochure from their parents. I this image of a small storefront with a grocery and a fish counter xD all backed by a big facility growing bumper crops together. Between the shop and the 'farm' would be a nice program room where two-three classes could be regalled with the pros and cons of aquaponics.

Probably worth getting yourself to a few workshops for different types of AP set ups.

The towers get a flow of water dribbling down into them from above. I think Nate sends about 10 gallons per hour through his. I'm currently sending about twice that amount of water through mine. I think more towers with the 10 gallons per hour though them is the better way to go.

I like this idea

Hi Noctame

We have been looking at the viability of putting in an upper floor to our set up and it would be similar to yours with a much simpler approach in design. You have also mentioned matters of using LEDs etc to provide the lighting element for plant growth.

We have found from experimenting that getting as much natural light onto the plants provides excellent growth throughout the winter months without the expense of forced lighting. SO in our design we have put the grow beds above the fish tanks which has the added advantage of using the upper floor to provide shade for the fish tranks in the summer months and cooling the water temperature for the trout.

It might be interesting to compare the cost of changing the roofing material from a solid non- light admitting structure to a some form of transparency against the long term cost of running banks of LEDs. One thing we have discovered is that the profit margin in AP can be tight and keeping costs to a minimum is vital. Running large pumps and other electric hungry accessories is expensive and using solar panels (which ain't cheap to buy) can never provide the complete answer.

We wish you well with your enterprise and look forward to seeing it up and running and - yes- there is so much available space and empty buildings in which to grow food
so go for it.


WD and OH

I like that idea a lot.

With a transparent/semi transparent roof system one could also easily have cherry tomatoes and strawberrys in upside down systems similar to nate's towers, with flat grow beds underneath and then the fish tanks on the concrete floor.

I wonder if solar tubes could be added to side walls to bring in light on an angle to the otherwise boring concrete walls.

I do agree on keeping costs low - natural light is certainly cheap.