Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi all, i'm to embark on a commercial/community scale aquaponic project inside a greenhouse. Please see the attached my plans and tell me what you think. In short: can i replace the aquaponic fish tanks with a bio-diverse fishpond and reach the same plant grow quality / quantity as a common commercial aquaponic systems? Thank you.

Best Regards Dave.

Please see image attached and some txt:
Our main objectives
1. We want to replace the fish rearing tanks normally used in aquaponic systems with a sustainable & biodiverse aquaculture pond
2. We want to produce onside our own vegetarian (floating) fish feed pellets, additional we want to feed our fish with black soldier fly larvae, worms and duckweed

Questions we have
1. How do we maintain the pond, how do we keep it clean
2. How dense does the fish population needs to be for our hydroponic setup? What system ratio’s can we apply in order to have lots of superb food for our plants? 3. What are the ingredients of a good fish meal, which keeps them happy and healthy?

Challenges ahead
1. She questions
2. How to obtain organic certificates in Portugal 3. Finding the right investors and funds
4. Can we find a way to work with Tilapia accoording to Portugese legislation, or what other fish specie options we have?

Welcome to the forum Dave. First off, I think this is a great goal and very ambitious. You don't mention anything about your level of experience with Aquaponics, although, I can see that you've put a lot of effort into trying to figure this out. First off if you haven't done any aquaponics you should try it small scale first.

For the big system, some things for you to think about -
1. Having the pond plants will lower the amount of nutrients available for the plants you hope to produce in the greenhouse. You'd have to stock greater numbers of fish, but then this would mean more cleaning.

2. Keeping the pond and greenhouse as separate loops might have some advantages. Nutrients, temperature and pest management would be more controllable. Just pump fish water up to the greenhouse system periodically.

3. Some of the koi pond groups might have some insight on keeping the pond clean. They usually want to remove the nutrients, you'd be trying to remove them from the fish pond to save them for the veggies/plants - I'd look for a way to
a: Remove as many of the solids as you can
b: Use a bio-filter to remove ammonia by breaking it down to Nitrates - This portion will go back to the pond plants.
c: Take the solids and process them to provide nitrate for the greenhouse plants but send most of the water back to the fish.
d: I'd probably do the greenhouse top ups from the pond water which should help with any excess nitrates the pond plants can't handle.

Hope this helps.

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Thought... does the pond exist, or to be constructed..
If to be built, then it could be designed to encourage solids at one place, so they can be easily pumped using a sludge pump to a reprocessing tank..

I saw a uTube presentation on a eco-swimming pool, where the surrounds had limited veggie materials to look good.. extra fish would naturally be needed..

A local chap threw silver perch in a swimming pool and has problems with fish numbers each year..
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Ponds suck.. If you want to make this an intensive productive system with commercial levels of production, doing it with a pond like this is a bit like tying one hand behind your back before you even start. Harder to remove fish, harder/impossible to sort and grade fish, harder to remove solids.

If you are thinking of being commercial, you need to ask yourself seriously what your reasons are for having the pond instead of tanks. Perhaps have an intensive set up with tanks, and plant production then next to it have a large pond with small set of beds as a filter system for it.

I don't have the words...

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BTW.... what is "a bio-dive"
Some think my place is a dive..

is this some industry techno-babble



and I do wonder what Commercial/Community is... I assumed it was more COMMUNITY and wanting to have an attractive pond.. but I would suspect that it will be far more trouble than you expect, as others have said.. but... it could be done..

What concerns me is the thought of having Commercial/Community and FISH, when you may not be able to control what the COMMUNITY does with their stuff.. "..Oh, you can't use LEBACID ! - I didn't know it would kill the fish..?? "
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