Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey guys,

I'm an ID major in college currently working on a project focusing on aquaponics systems. The goal for me on this forum is to seek out the most common and frustrating problems involved with operating an aquaponic system. I would then use this information to create a scalable solution that makes them more intuitive and accessible.

Cheers,

Tom

Hmm, kid of difficult question to answer as all systems are different, and the majority on this site have been designed and built by their owners with varying shapes, sizes, levels of filtration and degrees of automation etc. The best systems seem to work very well with no common or frustrating aspects involved in their operation.

You could design self-cleaning filters, but that has been done already, drum filters are used by large RAS aquaculture facilities, so unless you can design a better or smaller/cheaper one...

One thing I am sure lots of people would be interested in is the ability to easily measure certain water parameters. Standard kits enable you to measure for pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate, but the ability to measure potassium and phosphorous levels would be useful for optimising plant nutrition. Dissolved oxygen and CO2 would also be good to measure from the point of view of fish health, but perhaps all this involves more chemistry than industrial design?..

I've heard sand filters are good at removing suspended solids, which can be an issue in aquaponics/RAS, but tend to get clogged and anoxic etc. How about a self-cleaning sand filter?