Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi new guy here

Spending a year on a permacultre small holding in Scotland as part of my university gap year and been given an opportunity to set up an AP system.
Guy who owns the place has been interested for awhile but never found the time along with all of his other projects, been lurking on the forums for awhile and started to make some very basic plans
Just wanted to get some opinions on what i envisioned for the system.
1 IBC as fish tank with a central solids lift overflow leading out to a homemade radial flow filter that can be drained off to use the solids as an organic fertilizer.
From the RFF to 3 half IBC grow beds 2/3rd filled with a gravel medium and top 1/3rd with clay balls (500 or 600 liter still undecided) with valves on the inlets to try and get the beds to fill evenly.
40mm stand pipe with 80mm bell shipon draining into the other half of the IBC all connected to act as a sump.
22w 1000 liter per hour pump in one of the sumps leading to the fish tank, probably use some sort of a shower-head/bar to increase aeration.
Almost everything plumed with 40mm piping to try and avoid solid build up, GBs are so big for this reason as well. Dont want to use a designated bio-filter because im thinking it will reduce some nutrient availability to plants.

Ideally dont want to use an air pump as the whole thing will be running off-grid from a battery bank connected to a wind turbine and 3-5 solar panels
The system will be in a polly-tunnel to try and keep it running over winter, would like to use trout as the fish as they taste better and are more "Scottish" but im a little worried about the lack of aeration and susceptibility to environmental changes.
Also would like to feed them on worms and black solider fly larva and other greens, try and use as little pellets as possible. also have plenty of liquid seaweed here to top up micro nutrients when needed.

If anyone has any thoughts or concerns feedback would be much appreciated

Welcome to the forum Earthways .

Sounds like an interesting idea. You may want to look at LEAP or Low Energy Aquaponics and airlift information although if you're not wanting to run an air pump, air lifts are out.

From what I could figure your system is about 1 to 1 in volume of fish tank to volume of grow bed filtration. Your grow beds will work as the bio-filter so you don't really need another bio-filter. The important thing is that you stock your fish tank at levels the grow bed filtration can handle.

I haven't checked this part of your system but if you're going to run siphons make sure your sump can handle everything that will drain to it under worst case conditions.

I'm not sure how cold the winters are there but the BSF will probably need to be in the greenhouse during the Winter or well insulated.

Welcome Earthways.

I do not know exactly where you're located in Scotland but do know that your winters and ours here in North Wales can be a bit nippy. One or two things that may be relevant and things that we have experienced with keeping rainbow trout. They want to move about in the tank and with an IBC you won't be able to keep very many. We have found that keeping fish tanks in a polytunnel is beset with problems. Even in our winters the temperature in the daytime can get up to the upper 70's F which trout do not like one bit.

This may sound very negative but we went through the" disaster and learn programme" a few years ago and opted for putting the fish tank outside the polytunnel on the quiet side of the tunnel. Plenty of air across the top of the water and fairly steady water temperature . Yes you will get the water freezing but that will happen in a polytunnel as well. It happens in our AP set up in a barn, so unless you want to introduce water heaters but- well-forget about it. We also have growbeds that freeze solid so we have to turn the water off. When that happens the aeration is vital to keep the trout alive.

Do we think is worth the bother?.Absolutely. We have been going for over 7 years and keep and sell trout and carp one to one or into the trade. Plus the veggies help support the hydroponics and soil produce.

Come back to us if you hit a few problems.

Welsh Dragon

Hi Earthways and welcome
Sounds good.
Couple of points;
1000L/Hr pump possibly a little underpowered. You ideally want to change Ft water 1/Hr. Add the water to the FT at an angle to encourage circular flow.
To echo Welshdragon. Too much heat is the problem with trout not cold.

Hi everyone, Thanks for all the replys
Had a look into LEAP and the idea of an airlift filter sounds great so im going to have to read some more and get clued up on that.
Might need to redesign this then, have the FT on the outside of the pollytunnel, or change the fish or some other bright idea.

Thanks again for the feedback, exactly the sort of points i need.