Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

After years of hanging out on here and learning a lot I plan to start building my system in the next few weeks. I realize AP systems are never finished, unless you buy one of those slick BYAP systems. I need some advice on the final plan. As some of you know I grow fish for a living. I have ponds and don't really need to push the fish growth side of things beyond what is necessary for the plants. Over the years I have accumulated numerous tanks, pumps and other aquaculture supplies. For grow beds, my present plan is to use twenty tanks, 100 gallon (379 liters) capacity. These will either be constant flood or flood and drain. Or maybe half and half initially. So a total of 2000 gallons (7580 liters) of GB.

Fish tank? My preference is CHFT with gravity feed of growbeds with a sump tank pumping up to elevated fish tank. There are several possibilites from a 17,000 gallon (64,000 liter) round pool (it won't be elevated) down to a 400 gallon (1516 liters) round tank. Seems like the best would be an 8 foot diameter round tank with 1000 gallon (3790 liters) capacity. I am open to ideas and suggestions? I am concerned gravity feed won't suck the poop out of the FT.

The 1000 gallon FT and 2000 gallon GB would put me in the 1:2 volume ratio. Is this workable? I will try to show a google sketchup or hand sketch.

Also, all of this will be enclosed in a greenhouse. The GH will be nice now, in winter, yet require shade cloth and adequate ventilation in summer. All types of veggies will be grown, but I really want many tomatoes.

Okay, tell me what's wrong or right, can't wait to get started.
And thanks for all the great things I learned here already.
jd

Better get onto Sketchup JD......

Or perhaps even a pic of some of the components... How deep are the potential growbeds? How tall is the round tank?

I can't remember the exact depth of growbeds 10-12 inches. Is that deep enough? The 8 foot round tank is 3 feet tall. I don't have any pics handy. Will get some tomorrow in the light.

I will work on sketchup tonight.

Sketchup can be tricky to begin with, but if you do the basic tutorials that come with it, you can get going in no time... And if you are doing a large system, it's well worth spending a couple of hours playing with sketchup first... Even if you only make fairly rudimentary block objects about the right size of your components....

Okay, thanks. I will work at it. Probably should have done that before this post. Just wondered if I had any fundamental flaws in my concept.

Big thanks to Zman for explaining to me how to load this from sketchup.
It is drawn to scale. With 8 foot fish tank and sump tank. The small rectangular tanks are really two seperate GB's per unit. And I left one out on each side. Too late now, so twenty in all.
Not sure if this is final layout. What do you think?

Uploaded with

Gravity feed will clear the tanks as long as the water is circulating well (and goes past the drain at some point). A round tank should work great that way.

Thanks Dave, gravity flow will make it easier.

Here are some GB pics and one end of Greenhouse.

Here is hand sketched plan A with large low tank down the middle, used as sump with rafts in it. Don't really want to build a tank in middle of greenhouse, but, I can.
I may put ends of GB stands together in the middle. Then use another 8 foot tank for a sump. I'm trying to eliminate buying a lot of new pipe.

The growbed stands are side by side and two high. I plan to cut the top from the bottom, so I end up with two side by side growbeds.

The more I think about all this, maybe I should build in stages, maybe 4 growbeds at a time. Or should I just go ahead and do it all together?

What are the dims of the plant beds?

Ryan, the GB tanks are ten feet long, two feet wide and one foot deep. Little over 100 gallons. I think I have 20 or so of them. What do you think of my ratios 1000 gallons fish and 2000 gallons GB?

Those are nice growbeds!

It sounds like a good ratio from what I have seen others using but I dont have quite as much experience with flood and drain systems as some of the others here. I utilize the technology but not as my primary filtration so I would have to leave that answer to someone with a bit more hands on.

I will say, with those dims you end up with about 400ft^2 of growing space. Growing tomatoes, I would be looking at stocking weight of 200-240lbs of fish fed at 3% body weight daily. 240lbs is fine in a 1000gal tank and when you look at total water volumes, your stocking density is closer to (roughly 2,000gal water plus sump) 1/8th of a pound per gallon which shouldnt give you any problems as long as O2 levels are adequate.

What do you have planned for aeration? Are you trying to get away with just using the return splash or are you going to suppliment that with a compressor?

Yeah, they are SUPER popular for growing out coral frags as they are shallow, sturdy and pretty cheap for fiberglass.