Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello guys.
I was watching a video on aquaponics which stated that the minimum total amount of water in a system has to be at least 1000l for a stable system. Is this really true?
I would like to know as I have very limited space in my basement so if I were to erect a 1000l fish tank, I would need at least another 1000l of grow beds right? (I haven't read up too much on ratios yet so please correct me if I am wrong) Fitting those grow beds in the small room would be quite impossible.

Thank you in advance!

There are systems running off 10 gallon (37 liter) aquariums.
My system over the summer had a 30 gallon FT and about 50 gallons in GBs and sump tank.

They will be less temperature stable than larger systems, but they will definitely work and grow you food fine.

Okay thanks. If I may ask, how stable are the levels of say ammonia or nitrate?

Thank you in advance

With 9 comet goldfish feeding once a day I had a constant 0 amm, 0 nitrite, 0 nitrate across the board (after cycling was complete).

Just for completeness: I tested ammonia and nitrite 2x a week pretty consistently and nitrate every 2-3 weeks. Feed was AquaMax Grower 400 pellets, with occasional treats like cutworms from the GBs and freeze-dried bloodworms.

for outdoor systems where there are temperature fluctuations from day to night, a 1000 liter or 300 gallon system is a good minimum if you are not going to go to any extreme to control temperatures in a sub tropical climate.

Indoors where the temperatures are not going to swing too drastically, you can go with whatever size system you want. Keep in mind that you are not likely to grow out edible fish in anything smaller than 50 gallons and even 50 gallons is rather small to grow out plate size fish.

The amount of fish you can keep needs to be based on the amount of filtration/aeration you have. The less water you have the less stable your system will be with other parameters but if you monitor carefully/regularly and are not keeping an overabundance of fish, you can have quite small systems and be just fine. I've been running a little system with less than 5 gallons of fish tank a bus tub as the grow bed and a 5 gallon bucket as the sump. As long as you don't cook and freeze the fish it should be fine.

Alright, thanks for both your replies. I have done a search for some largish fiberglass fish tanks but to no avail. I was wondering if I could use one of these blue barrels which are 210 liters (46 gallons). Would this work if I wanted to raise edible fish?
Also, this is planned to be put in the basement.
Thanks guys!

You can use those, but like TCL said it's a bit small for edible fish. If you have room an IBC tank is excellent and what I'll be using next year. They hold 250-330 gallons, you can find them on craigslist for ~$50-100 USD. A lot of people don't seem to know they are called IBCs so they are usually listed as water totes or water tanks.

What if I reduce the amount of fish? Say 10 fish in the blue container? The only reason is that I dont think the IBC will fit though the door :p

Thanks

I would say cut the ibc so the it fits through the doors to the basement
and use the part you cut as grow bed, then you may be able to grow 10 or 15 fish.

Look at this thread below, he has a basement system with an ibc.

http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13049

I can see the IBC might be difficult to get down basement stairs.

You might be able to get some livestock watering tanks that are likely to fit through doors the deeper ones are around 60 cm deep so on its side you can likely get through doors.

Okay thanks all, I will assess my options.

One last question.

What if I were to use fish that where designed to not be eaten in the end? Like goldfish or something. (Im not too informened on fish but are goldfish suitable for aquaponics?) Or are the drums themselves just really unsuitable? I was thinking that it might be quite dark in there and so it would be hard to check for solids accumulating and reaching in there with your hand is a bit, well, wet

Maybe i'll just build my own tank.

From what I have read (lacking practical experience as I am only just starting out), blue drums, IBC totes, in fact just about anything can be used but it depends on what has been in them previously.

People seem pretty happy to get ones that used to contain, for example, something produced for the food industry as these haven't (shouldn't have!) been used for super harsh chemicals.

There is a discussion from earlier in the year that has some useful information started by Ronmaggi here that I found good. Among other things it recommends staying away from products that are designed to kill (pesticides, for example).

Cheers