Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey there all, I've been pumping the knowledge from this forum for the past day! I'm very interested in growing some of my own food and going crazy over aquaponics ideas.

Now I'm planning to build my own system, however I have quite a few constrains. First of all, I live in an apartment so it'd have to be indoors and in living spaces so it must look acceptable. Second space is of course at premium, I can commit floor area about 80-130cm x 50cm. Third, there is no light in this country, so artificial lighting is a must.

So with those in mind my plan is to buy an used aquarium to use as fish tank, size 100-400 litres. Then around that I'd build a support structure with grow beds on top of the tank. I could do either 2 beds with same area as aquarium with light for each or put them in a U shape around a central light. Either would come out to around 1:1 ratio if beds are 30cm deep and the aquarium is 50-60cm deep. That'd make the system easier as no sump would be needed right?

I think it'd be really cool to be able to eat the fish but I understand that in smaller tanks it's of course not practical or possible. In such cases it just makes more sense to have for example gold fish. What do you think of the minimum where growing edible fish makes sense? My main aquarium candidates are around 300litres.

This kind of system would need only one pump right? Most likely with a timer would be best to let grow beds empty after flooding?

Any other crazy ideas of how to utilize the space I have (100x50x250cm) so that they look nice and can accommodate grow lights?

Welcome to the forum Orthas. Sounds like you've got the AP bug