Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Indoor 120 Gallon Aquarium system

my current system consists of
3 gold fish
one 2ft by1.5 ft grow bed
a 90watt UFO LED light 60 watt blue spec compact fluorescent and a 600 watt digital ballast pushing 400 watts of Metal halide(this is off for the next days because I had to return it) My light cycle is either 24 hours or 18 hours.
A large fan set on low(18 hours)
one pump with two outlets.
outlet 1 has a 4 inch air stone
outlet 2 has a small filter I purchased to clear out debris(its designed for a 5 gallon tank )
300 watt heater set at 70 degrees F (about 21 C) it was too cold without a heater

Sorry about the large pics, next time I will re-size them.






Plants are (Largest-smallest)
1 mint, 3 basil, 5-6 romain lettuce seedlings

More pics here http://indooraquaponicsgarden.com/index ... aquaponics

My goal for my system. Vertical growing towers that rotate(I think I may use wind power from the fan). one additional 2 foot by 1.5 foot grow bed. Possibly another depending on advice from others.

I have a couple questions. Do you think my tank is ready for fish? How many can I expect to raise safely?( I decided on 35 to start)

I would like to grow as many tilapia in the tank as I can without going too too crazy.


How can I feed my 1" fingerlings organic food? Will worms work?



thanks for all the help

(Note:This is a double post from another forum I posted on)

Are you ready for fish? Well how long as it been set up? Have you cycled yet? Do you have a test kit?
What are the water tests saying?
Ammonia,
Nitrite,
Nitrate,
pH
Temp

I highly advise reading the Basic Info and Useful info sections of the forum to help you answer many of these questions.

I also think you will need to remove the gravel from the bottom of that aquarium to keep from having issues with trying to grow as many tilapia as you can. In a heavily stocked system, you need to keep food and poo from building up in the fish tank.

How is the system set up? Are you just pumping from the aquarium up to the grow bed and then the grow bed draining back to the fish tank? Or is there a sump tank involved? How much flow does your pump move per hour at the head you are asking of it? Are you using siphons or a timer to manage the flood and drain? You give the surface dimentions of your grow bed but not the depth, how many gallons of media do you have? That is what will dictate how many fish you can support.

For every 5 gallons of flood and drain grow bed media, you might grow a single 1 lb fish out. If your grow bed has a full 12 inches deep of media, then you might have about 20 gallons of media there. You should probably only go for 4-8 fish if you are planning to grow out in that system. With 35 tilapia, even small ones (since small tilapia should be fed very high protein food) you may quickly find your system overloaded. (I currently have 12 1 inch tilapia in an aquarium and an equal volume of media filtering water for that aquarium and I have to be careful not to feed them too much. I'm just overwintering them in the aquarium until they can move back outdoors.) Anyway, if you want to grow out 35 tilapia to half a pound each, you need about 90 gallons of flood and drain grow bed or you will need an additional filtration method and probably water changes to boot.

As to feed. Worms do not make a complete fish feed. Too fatty. Worms can be used to supplement their diet but you will probably need to get some dense culture feed if you want to grow them out quickly and yet keep the water quality good enough to keep them alive.

Thanks for replying to my post.

I have had my goldfish in there for about three weeks going on four.
My ph stays around 7.8-8.0 or so.
It may be easier to look at my readings here
http://indooraquaponicsgarden.com/extra/lab.html

My goldfish have seemed very happy and active which makes me believe that the current conditions are good, which might not say too much.

Total I have 50L(13 gallons) of hydroton . 30 L is in the container and the I will be adding two more bags of hydroton ( or something) over the weekend.

I must admit I do need to do a lot more reading. I will try my best to keep questions to topics not found in search. Saying that, I appreciate you pointing out the correct ratio. I will need to increase the depths of my grow beds and add a few more bags but I may need to use something else to help filter my water (worms in the grow bed seems like something I would like to do).

I am using a continuous flow of water from a small hydroponics pump. I need to look up the flow per hour. I do not have a sump at this point but may add one if need be. I am going to be switching to a flood and drain method eventually.

Another note:I am going to get be adding a few fruit trees to my system in large pots and a lot of vegetables asap.

The mint will take over your GB. Kill it now beore it spreads.

Oh wow look at that. Thanks !

Yeah wow... the question is whether to just bin the whole lot (including hydroton) or sit there for hours (maybe days) to separate the roots from the hydroton so it can be reused...

I'd imagine given a few weeks in a dark humid place it would compost and pretty much break down? Or am I wrong.