Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey guys, my name is Chris. I have recently been looking into starting a garden because I am moving to a place where I will actually have a back yard to do that in. I'm not a big fan of food as it is but I am working on being more self sufficient and eating better. For the past couple of days I have been looking into hydroponics vs. soil growing and just happened to come across aquaponics and I think it fits in perfectly with what I'm trying to accomplish. I actually have a few ideas that I want to incorporate into the set up but I was hoping you guys could point me to specific resources to check out. I'll be completely honest, I hate having to dig through stuff on the net because I'm more into actually doing things than wasting all of my time just trying to learn where to start. I'm not opposed to reading a good resource, I'm just opposed to looking for a needle in a haystack. Hopefully you guys can understand that.

Once I get where I'm going I won't be able to take this project on as a full system but I would like to start with something extremely small as a proof of concept because it will incorporate a lot of new skills that I have to learn and develop. My goal would be to have a set up that is no larger than a 10 gallon aquarium and grows something edible such as strawberries. I'm open to suggestions but the goal is to keep the cost to a minimum yet still be fairly comprehensive in what I can learn.

Before I start asking for help, let me explain how I would like to integrate power generation into this system. I figure if I expect people to help expedite my learning process, I might as well offer up what I can. Take this with a grain of salt, they are just ideas for now.

Basically a friend of mine and I are going to start an electrical company and we both want to get into solar and wind power along side the regular work. My idea came from some ideas I had for a wind turbine. The idea is to create the wind turbine in such a way that the wind spirals towards the center effectively creating an air pump in addition to the rotational energy which can be converted to electricity. From the rotational energy, two boundary layer pumps, aka Tesla turbines run as pumps, could be spun. One could use the air from the wind turbine as it's working fluid and the other could use the water from the aquaponics system as it's working fluid. Attached to each pump would be their own small electric generator motors so they could generate electricity or be powered as motors to spin the pumps when the wind turbine was not enough. Essentially this gives you your air and water pumps needed for a system like this and possibly some excess electricity being generated. Also so long as the wind is blowing, the pumps should work. The nice thing about the TT is they are supposed to handle particulates in their working fluid much better than most others.

Now as far as my questions, I would like to be pointed to a good resource that covers the different types of aquaponic systems and the benefits and disadvantages. I'm sure one system will excel in certain scenarios more than others but I'm looking for a clear explanation. I would like to know about what materials are good, in particular which plastics do not leech bad chemicals into the fish and plants. It would be nice to have a resource that covers all of the basic materials used with their advantages and disadvantages including costs. I can most likely build whatever is suggested as I've done plenty of construction and hobby building. A good resource on fish including things like taste, nutrition and marketability if I wanted to sell to a local restaurant. Basically what I'm looking for is a complete how to for dummies!

I don't mean to be rude by asking to be pointed to all of this information. I understand I will still have to actually read most of it, I just don't have the time nor the patience to go digging for all of it. I have so many things I could work on that I need to be able to focus my efforts on actually doing things. Hopefully the example of integrating the wind turbine will start to show that I'm not asking for hand outs, just to maximize my time because the sooner I get the basics down, the sooner I can actually develop new and improved ways of doing things. That's ultimately my goal is to spend most of my time creating new, useful ways of doing things and then passing them along to everyone else. I'm not interested in being greedy, I'm interested in furthering progress, I hope you guys understand.

As far as my initial experiment, ideally I want something that I can easily carry and move which would be no more than about 75lbs, is relatively cheap and comprehensive. My thoughts so far would be a used small aquarium, some cheap fish like gold fish, guppies, mollys etc. I will possibly attempt to incorporate a small wind turbine prototype into it once I get things going. Also the plant chosen should be something that doesn't need full light because I will want to keep this indoors for now. I am hoping that I can get this going for under $40 but I don't know how realistic that is. Please let me know what you guys think and your advice.

Eventually I would like to see a full scale garden with enough food to live off of and some basic variety. I am also looking into ways to maximize the growing space to make best use of the area I can set aside for this. The end goal would also incorporate a greenhouse of sorts with some electronic automation as I like to mess with electronics. Thanks ahead of time!

I should add that I was also thinking about using solar water heating on the back of solar panels to help regulate the water temp and I was thinking about aeroponics instead of hydroponics for the plants.

Hello and welcome.

A great starting place for beginners is the IBC of aquaponics. You can find it at http://ibcofaquaponics.com/

While this might not be exactly what you are looking for initially with a small system, it has a lot of info for beginners and will help give you an idea how people run their systems.

There is also the BYAP trial thread where they tested each of the types of systems. Long story short, there isnt a huge a difference between them.

http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=8621&hilit=byap+trial

As for marketability, that is entirely dependent on your local area and what fish and veg will grow in your local area. That is something that can best be answered by yourself or someone in your area.

A small aquarium is a great way to get started. Thats what i did and it didnt take long for me to expand. Feel free to check out my aquarium thread in my signature for ideas.

I'm checking that pdf out right now but there are a lot of pages and it's appears so far to be more geared towards reading material instead of a pure resource type of material. I'll still get through it even if I don't read every word. I'll definitely check out your aquarium build, thanks for that! As far as what system is better, I'm more interested in when it's more appropriate to use one over the other such as NFT not being good for plants with lots of roots, assuming I understood that correctly. As for the fish thing I was just curious although I would still like to find a good comparison between their nutritional value and taste since I'm picky! Anyway, thanks for the quick reply, I'm really excited to get into this as I see so many ways to integrate a lot of things. Apparently some of the ideas I have are already being done but so are many things!

Sometimes smaller is not better. More water is easier to keep stable, and stability is important.

With the Areoponics idea, be prepared to fail. I am not trying to sway you away from trying, but there are a number of failed attempts on this site. The nozzles clog quickly. In hydro everything is a nice clean solution, in AP, not so clean. That is why we love grow beds. They grab the solids and make good use of them.

Ronmaggi - I don't really know much about aeroponics other than true aeroponics creates a fine mist of a particular droplet size range. I'm assuming that for that to work and last the water would need to be filtered very well. In theory is that correct? You'll have to excuse me if I don't have the basic details down yet, I'm still reading! All I know so far is that the fish water is used to feed the plants and some sort of filtering has to be done to the water but to what degree, I haven't gotten that far yet. I do realize though that aeroponics would require much more fine tuning and it is not my plan to start with that right away!

As far as the size thing goes, I understand what you're saying but to step up in size would also mean to step up in cost which will put the project further into the future. Beyond the cost it would then have to be moved outside which opens up more issues until I get settled in at my new place. At least it sounds like a smaller set up would require better tuning of the system so I figure if I can make a small system work then I should be a bit ahead of the game when I step up in scale. Basically what I'm saying is it sounds like a smaller system will let me know very quickly if I'm doing something wrong! Or am I off base?

Aeroponics seems to be having a resurrgance of late.... kind of the flavour of the month....

Particularly amongst the pot growers... misting/fogging... cloning...

It was briefly popular in hydroponics years ago... but abandoned as high maintenance,unreliable, and more particularly costly...

In aquaponics... it's been abandoned by those that have tried it... even quicker....

Forget about the idea... there's simpler and cheaper options available ....

The biofilm that grows on everything in an AP system is the problem you would be fighting in an aeroponics AP setup.

may be better to start with a barrel system if your worried about space, that's the smallest i would go personally, simply because of the high temp fluctuation you are likely to get with a smaller body of water.
nat has made a few different barrel systems that seem pretty good maybe look up some of his stuff.

Rupert - I figured aeroponics would be a hassle but I always try to strive for the best and then work backwards to find a compromise between reasonable application and benefits. I will still probably give it a go at some point on a small scale set up but I don't disagree with you. I see it more of an experimentation thing to tinker with which is what keeps me going with anything I do, trying to find new or better ways. It may not be new but maybe I can find a way to make it more of a viable option assuming there would be some reasonable benefit. And yes, I originally read about it for growing marijuana although I've never had the opportunity to try my hand at that, at one time I did research it because I was interested. If I had my own place here in CA I would be doing it but I'm staying with family and I don't really smoke anymore so it's a moot point for me now.