Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

i have been looking at so many different systems, and it getting quite confusing, can i do a simple ibc tote for fish tank, and run it through water trough's with floating raft deep water culture type setup, what all will need and how big of plant trough per ibc fish tank, how many fish per 275 gal ibc tote/tank. also saw something about fresh water prawns growing in the bottom of plant tank. help, very confused

First thing to do is is familiarise yourself with the nitrogen cycle http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/infor ... gen-cycle/
And maybe take a look at the IBCof Aquaponics http://ibcofaquaponics.com/

The problem with the system you are proposing is that you may not have sufficient surface area for the nitrifying bacteria to colonise - this is one of the main reasons to have a growbed full of a medium such as expanded clay balls or gravel - without the bacteria, your filtration will not be working.

My personal opinion is to first build a small system with a grow bed and when you have seen how the nitrogen cycle work and have experience running an AP sytem you build a raft system, but that's just my opinion and I'm also pretty new at this, so don't believe everything I say.

With the raft you have no filtration, your fish would pass away. With 275gall when fully cycled you could stock at 1ib per 10 gallons,easy figures to work with. Each pound of fish requires a minimum of 25sq ft of surface area to filter the water,so you could have 27ib of fish times 25sq ft,gives you 675 sq ft minimum of surface area of filter media. Now depending on your choice of media,each has a different surface area,for example river gravel is said to be 20 sq ft per cube ft of media. So your minimum requirement for full stocking is 33 cube ft of filter media. This with your water turn over at ideally once per hour.
If you had filtration at this level then your raft system is a working system,bare in mind these are minimum figures for that stocking,all sort of variances come into play with stocking,growbed size turn over,but if you stick to working formulas you shouldn't go wrong. My advice,patience and keep reading through this forum,everything you need to know is here.