Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello, I'm new to both this forum and aquaponics. I've been busy building a greenhouse with a tank for my first go at what I'm calling hybrid aquaponics. I'm calling it hybrid aquaponics because the plants will be grown in soil and the water will not be returned to the tank after using it to water the plants. The tank is primarily there to serve as a big thermal mass to absorb heat and re-radiate it to the greenhouse at night to keep things from freezing in the winter, but I'll be drawing off about 1/10th of the water each day to water the plants and replace the need for any petroleum-based fertilizers.

Hi CD, welcome to the forum.

what fish will you keep in the fish tank ?
you may still need filters and aeration - depends on species and level of stocking.

Hi dlf_perth,

I'm planning on stocking it with bluegill (sometimes called brim), and I hope to have as many as 20 in it. I will definitely need aeration, which I'm going to accomplish with a water circulator that also draws in air. I might also drop an air stone in it with an air pump but it's almost 6' deep so if I do that I'll need a very powerful air pump.

In which case you will probably require filtration as well.
Basically you are running a separated operation of RAS and veg rather than an integrated one.
where fish waste water is used on plants.
I gather that is the plan as per above posts ?

you don't mention how large (volume) your fish tank is.

Oh yeah, it's about 165 gallons (it actually holds more water than that, but that's where the markings end).

I've never heard of RAS and veg before. What does RAS stand for? But yeah the fish water will be used on the plants. That way I won't have to use any petroleum based fertilizers to get the kind of vibrant plants I want. Also the tank acts like a very large thermal mass, plus the heater for the tank provides some additional heat to help prevent freezing in the greenhouse in the wintertime (it's a very small greenhouse at just 6'x8' so this is a lot of thermal mass for such a small greenhouse).

I don't think I'll need filtration as I can adjust the amount of water changed out each day as needed to accommodate the fish. I once put a baby catfish and bluegill into 10 gallon tank and they both survived to adulthood (the catfish got to be about a foot to a foot and a half long and the bluegill was about 8 or 9 inches long and full grown) before I released them back into the lake because they were just too cramped in the tank. I never did a single water-change in that tank either. That was a little crazy though and definitely wasn't very humane to those fish.