Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Greetings from Portsmouth, Va. I have been studying AP for a few months and playing around with some ideas. I wanted to build a full blown system in my backyard – but budget constraints kept me at bay. Whatever I do outside I would need to build a greenhouse. Anyway I decided to construct a small unit indoors.
I tried a few ways of doing it, but kept running into siphon and draining problems as well as too much risk getting water all over the floor in the house! That does NOT make the wife happy!
I came up with this design (see pics below).

This is a 30 gallon tank on the bottom. I have three grow beds, 1 9 gallons, 1 5 gallons and one is 12 gallons. The grow medium is 9 inches. Two of the grow beds I use pea gravel, the 9 gallon I use the clay pellets.
I pump the water out of the fish tank with a submersible pump (1048 Universal Pump by Eheim) up to the two round grow beds splitting the flow to each grow bed and distributing the water through round drip lines.

I drain the water from the two round grow beds into the large square grow bed. I use loop siphons so that each bed will fill and drain. I drain the large square bed into the fish tank with a loop siphon as well so that it is all fill and drain.

Due to some overflows, I installed an overflow tube at the top of each grow bed in event that the siphon fails or the water flow is greater going in than out. This usually only happens in the square bed – but rarely.
I keep the lines clean by installing screens at the outlet of each grow bed (I used sink faucet screens). These still slow up sometimes so I use a long CLEAN hose and blow through the outlet hoses and clear out the gunk. I also clean out the pumps filter at least once a week sometimes twice. I use a ten penny nail to unplug the holes in the tubing for the drip tubes.
See pics below regarding the plumbing.

At first I had 6 cheap gold fish, now I have 5. Later I added 12 small mouth bass from the bait store (minnows). Only two survived, but they are very strong. A friend of mine was doing a back yard unit at the same time and had a catastrophe and all but 9 of his 50 tilapia died – so I rescued 7 and they are in the tank as well.

After two weeks, I planted some seeds: lettuce. Basil, 1 cucumber plant, and one tomato plant as well as 4 bean plants. They have begun to grow after one week. Still waiting for the cucumber and tomato to break through.

I am feeding them using Aquatic Eco-Systems Dense Culture Food Finfish Strater Diet. They like it, but I have some goldfish food and dried worms that they like better so I usually through a little of that in for the smaller fish such as the bass.

Today I did my normal water test and am not happy with my results. The unit has been running now for about 4 weeks and 1 of those weeks with seeds planted. So the plants are doing much yet.
Here are my numbers: PH -6.2, Ammonia – 3.0 ppm, Nitrate – 10 ppm, and Nitrite - .50 ppm.
I thought it would be better than that. Either I am over feeding, too many fish, or my grow beds are not performing up to par.

Question – Should I add a filtration device? Is there another solution other than adding another grow bed or getting rid of some fish?

That’s more story – I’ll brace myself for your critique. Thanks.

See my pics attached.

Here are some more pics regarding the plumbing.

Hay there Don and welcome to the BYAP forum

First!!!!!! Stop feeding!!!!! You need to let that ammonia go down.

You probably need to get some shell grit for your system to buffer the pH, looks like it may be getting close to too low and causing your ammonia to spike again (that is if the system ever fully cycled in the first place.) Tricky part here, you don't want to change the pH too fast and with the ammonia so high, you don't want to move the pH up too much while there is much ammonia. If the system was fully cycled and you have an appropriate source of water (like don't have to worry about chlorine or chloramine) it might be time for some water changes to get things back under control. If the system wasn't fully cycled, then water changes might slow that process even more.

Have you tracked your water quality through the cycling? Cycling up a new system often takes 6 weeks, sometimes more. Ammonia spike then nitrite spike then both ammonia and nitrite 0 while nitrates were climbing?

Need more info I think before giving too much more advice.

Welcome, Don,

Sorry to hear of your difficulties, but they look to me as if your system is not cycled yet. Hard to say, but I agree with TCL: stop feeding and test daily for a few days and post your results.

Nice looking plumbing (clean work), but possibly too complex: I went through some interesting times before deciding KISS is the way to go: less to fail.

Have you thought about goldfish or catfish? Either would survive your winters, although they would not grow below 40degF or 50degF. This would make things a lot cheaper than tilapia or whatever which need a greenhouse (and flooding outdoors, I've found, brings a much milder response from the DW).