Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I've been looking into aquaponics for quite some time (along with some other home grown food ideas) because of the silly high food costs here. Fresh fish costs $17-$30 per kg depending on type and frozen varies from $15-$25/kg (Canadian dollars). "fresh" produce (much of which comes from the US) is also quite expensive due to the trucking costs.
Anyway the setup I'm looking at would be located in my walkout basement (south facing) which gets decent light although I'll still have to add supplemental lighting.

One question I haven't been able to find an answer to is what would be the best kind of fish for my situation? air temp in the basement ranges from about 20 in winter to up to 30 in the summer(night time temperature drops to about 15-20 depending on the weather if I have the furnace off which I often do in summer). I'm not sure what the water temperatures will be but I'm guessing it will be a couple degrees lower than the air temp. Rainbow Trout and Tilapia are both available to me although due to the lovely government licencing costs are $10/yr for trout and $150/yr for tilapia (even though tilapia cant survive our winters in the wild so there is no risk of them becoming invasive!). I've heard that Trout can be a bit mushy in a an aquaponics system (not sure if that's sound advice as that's coming from someone selling only tilapia) and I prefer the eating habits of tilapia as I can supplement with scraps from the grow beds to save some money on feed. I also like that I can easily breed tilapia. However I'm not sure how well they will do in the water temperatures I have... I can add supplemental heating easy enough (the system is 2' away from the water heater so its easy enough to run a heating coil from there) but I'd rather not if I don't have to so costs can be kept down.

A second concern is the control of pests mainly spider mite. Indoor gardening here its always a case of when not if you get an infestation of spider mites. I heard that ladybugs will eat them but I'm not sure if there would be enough food for them to survive outside of spider mite infestations. Obviously most chemical means of control are no good for the fish so I'm not sure what other economical option there is. Any suggestions? I've heard mixed results with neem oil and it's not exactly cheap here from what I've seen (about $5 per 100ml if memory serves correctly)

I have a plan drawn out for the full system but initially I'll start small with 2 beds (flood and drain) 1m x 1m x 0.5m and 1 fish tank 1m x 1m x 1m and low stocking numbers to keep everything running smooth while the system gets going. If everything goes well, long term I think I could scale up to 14 grow beds and 5 tanks (everything would be joined into 1 system to help with stability) I'll explain more and share the simplified plans I have drawn up later once I find out the answers to the above questions.

Also Merry Christmas everyone!

Cheers,
Bob.

i've raised blue tilapia in my basement, and it gets cool in the winter.. i had to put in some heat when the temps got down to 48f.. i had yellow perch at the same time, they would not have required the heat..
and it got a little to warm in the summer for me to do trout (or i'd have to cool)..
i've used ladybugs to get aphids under control, for spider mites, i used a predator mite
so i guess i'm saying, try yellow perch.. bluegill grow to slow for me, but they are another northern option

Thanks for the reply Keith.
My basement is heated and insulated so shouldn't go below 18C in winter (~65F I think?) although I haven't actually checked what the temperatures are down there... Also with it being a south facing walkout it gets plenty of sun heating when the sun is out.
I looked into the other fish you suggested but I can't find a supplier anywhere nearby. I've only found 2 suppliers within an hours drive, one has tilapia the other has rainbow trout.
Predator mites from what I've read like cool humid conditions which is the opposite to what I have here (average humidity is below 40% with the exception of June which is usually quite humid) Is there a specific type that is better suited to the dry?

Here's a couple ideas I'm playing with:

This is the overhead shot each square is 1mx1m and the long rectangles are 1.5m x 1m
Initially I'd go with just 1 tank section and 1 growbed section to get things going.

Then I have to ideas for the vertical layout


I like this design because it has a single pump and it pumps clean water instead of water from the fish tank which will also prevents the fish tank from ever running out of water. The downside is the fishtank is raised up above floor level which makes feeding more difficult and needs a lot more structure to hold it up. I didn't draw all the growbeds in to keep it simple to understand.


I like this design for having the fish tank lower to the ground but it also has the pump pushing dirty water which isn't great for the pump I'm guessing and it also has separate pump for the sumps which isn't ideal because it could cause the fish tank to be pumped dry. Again I didn't draw all the growbeds in to keep it simple. I also drew the lines out of the distribution box in the wrong spots to keep it simple for this one (all lines out are out the bottom the line in goes to the top)

I am planning on the system being flood and drain using a simple distribution box (small motor powering a disk covering the pipes going to the growbeds that has a pie shaped cutout) so the pump will run all the time reducing the size required. I will probably go for having dual pumps to keep things going should 1 fail and dual motor distribution box (or possibly dual distribution boxes). I like my fail safe systems

Cheers!
Bob