Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi everyone,

I only just recently learned about the wonderful world of Aquaponics, and am planning on creating a setup in an area of my backyard. I've checked it for light and it looks good - now I want to check and see if my dimensions are feasible with you all.

I've attached a screen grab from Sketchup of my thought process:



My primary questions:

1) Is my grow bed surface area (2 x 24 sq ft) appropriate for my tank size (2 x 100 gallon)?

2) Is there a recommended flow rate for grow beds of the size I am thinking of?

3) Is there a recommended sump size for 2 x 100 gallon tanks?

Thanks!

MrMilos
Aquaponics Newbie

Hi MrMilos, Welcome to the forum



1. As long as you don't stock more fish than the filtration that those grow beds can provide.
2. Aim to turn over the volume of the fish tank at least once an hour.
3. This will depend on how you're going to run your system - Siphons or Constant Flood - because the amount of water that can flow back to the sump during a power outage will be different.

What type of fish are you planning on growing?

Thanks for the warm reply and information. As far as the fish are concerned, I am thinking Tilapia would be a good place to start as the system will be outdoors and they seem to have one of the higher temperature bands. I still need to see if they are available and legal at my location.

I've modified my layout a bit, and next up is sketching out the system on a 3D modeling program I have. Would love feedback when done!

As far as the size of the sump tank is concerned, it totally depends on how your doing your grow beds. If your grow beds are flood and drain, then your sump tank needs to be larger then the total volume of the 2 grow beds combined. So with the 2 grow beds you have each being 24 sq feet, assuming they are 1 foot deep, that's 48 cubic feet total or roughly 360 gallons. with that set up you would want your sump tank to be a minimum of 400 gallons.

Not exactly because in a media filled bed, only a fraction of the volume is occupied by water. It depends on the type of media but you can consider something like 40% water.
On your 360 gallons of GB volume you'll have something around 150 gallons of water. You should get an extra 50 gallons at least.
I would say minimum sump would be 200 gallons. But if you have a little more it's better !