Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey There Folks,

My family and I (mostly me...) have been bitten by the Aquaponics bug. Originally I had cleared out a deck over a dirt patch next to our spa with the earnest intention to start a soil garden. My wife and I had determined that it was time to take control of what we put in our bodies. I had been doing some research into what type of planting I would be doing with this rather small (12' x 20') dirt patch in side yard. I was considering using the lumber used to build the deck to create raised grow beds and was intrigued by the square foot method but not "energized."

I'm a computer programmer and web designer so there had to be something out there that would appeal to my sense of techy nerdy-ness. So the dirt patch sat for the next 18 months, in the meantime my chocolate lab had dumped enough mud into our spa to build a mud hut! 'Till one day I hit the stumble button on my Firefox browser and landed on an Auzzy talking about his aquaponics system. Immediately my curiosity was piqued! Here was something that had some serious science behind it and appealed to my other sense, that of hippie-ness. This system could be built out of recycled materials, used 90% less water than traditional soil gardening and could provide for me and mine indefinitely. Not to mention every picture of his plants seemed to be out of a gourmet cooking book! Beautifully scientific! I was hooked.

Since that first video I've soaked up as much information as possible to begin working on my family's system. So now we have a three IBC tote system (styled after Murray Hollam's CHOP MkII design) With three fourteen square foot grow beds and a three hundred gallon fish tank and a sump under one of the beds. The system sits on level ground and I've utilized gravity feed and bell siphon flood and drain with 20mm river rock beds (we're thinking about using lava rock for the next three beds). The bell siphons were quite a challenge to get running consistently. But now that I've "dialed" them in, they system runs like a swiss watch.

We've got nearly a dozen different vegetables growing now (it been two weeks since we got it running.) and everything is working awesomely! In fact I was telling my wife yesterday that now that I didn't have to fiddle with the system anymore all I get to do is watch the plants grow. I've been feeding the plants with sea weed extract and have even put in some ironite to make sure the plants are getting maximum nutrition until the day we get the fish in the tank.

We've decided to go with Tilapia as this is Arizona and we have no restrictions as y'all Auzzies do... Plus the other species of fish seem to take much longer to get to 'plate size.' If anybody has any suggestion as to where to get some fry here in the Phoenix area that would prove most helpful. There was a guy on craigslist who have fry for a quarter a piece but by the time I was ready to buy he was gone.

So here are a few pics of our system hope you like and feel free to make any suggestions. We're noob's at this so any help would be great.

Howdy saguarotreker, good to see you made it to the forum...

First thing I would suggest is that you make a minor mod and change it to chift pist... No sense in wasting power and pumping poo into your fish tank if you don;t really need to, and in your situation you are in a perfect position to have a straight shift pist (chop) system.

Hey thanks for the suggestion. I wasn't sure what a shift pist design was so I looked it up and that is essentially what I'm doing. The fill feed is gravity to the beds and the beds filter and drain to the sump. I am using only one pump to move the cleaned water from the sump to the tank. I've also created a series of saddle valves that have been submerged prior to leaving the sump (quieter and less restriction or back-pressure on the impeller) and I also have an over-flow 'spillway' five inches above the siphon to the beds. That way I keep a constant flow rate to the beds as the tank's water level is always consistent. So my beds are fed from a vented siphon starting at the bottom of the tank and the overflow is 'skimming' any excess water volume from the top of the tank.

Yep... I don't see any advantage in the ChopII design.... KISS... (and welcome)

RhibaFarms is in Chandler. They may have some fry, or can point you to another source. http://www.rhibafarms.com/

Nice system, I'm just around the corner from you 15ave and Union Hills. I have a hard time keeping Tilapia alive through the winter here in Phoenix without some kind of external heat. Check your water temps in the morning and evening two weeks ago mine dropped down to the mid 60’s in the morning. If you are located on the southern wall you might be OK for temp. I have found my Tilapia start to die at 55dec and all die at 50dec. I sell my extra fry but I don’t have any available at this time.

I run channel catfish and bluegill because of the temperature problems with tilapia (I was unwilling to heat my system water and even in a greenhouse in Central Florida I had two years in a row of weather cold enough to have killed tilapia without me running a hot water hose out to the system.) And I've found that the channel catfish seem to grow just as fast if not faster for me than the mixed gender blue tilapia did.

I can't really speak for the growth rate of bluegill yet as I haven't had them very long yet.

Well not really that new. This coming June we'll have moved two years ago. I've been dealing with some frustration in my new larger system, mainly pump reliability. I've gotten that resolved and am now back up and running 2265 liters of grow bed and 1040 liters of fish tank. I've just added 45 tilapia fingerlings and will eventually build my stock up to nearly the fish to water volume limit of 1 fish per gallon. I will also be adding an additional 2265 liters of grow bed.

I've read several posts regarding mechanical filtration, both the good and bad of removing fish solids. But, what I'm looking for is information specifically comparing the merits of adding red worms to the beds to deal with solids build up versus mechanical filtration. I would like to avoid the additional maintenance associated with mechanical filtration.