Hello everyone!
Great to find this forum, and great for it being so active. I look forward to picking your brains for my back yard build. I am in a small little town yet am lucky enough to be just minutes away from Theopolis Inslee. I hear he is one of the best in the business with fish, and has ventured into aquaponic chives to cleanse his fish effluent water for recycling to avoid high state penalties for stream dumping. He has since quit chives due to the market and raises decorative water plants, but that isn't the issue. I'm just saying I will ask there as well as here for my knowledge. I already know that "what I am doing" has been done, I am just having a harder than usual time finding more than just gnash06's PVC grow bed setup.
I like his system and after doing the math provided by this forum I have realized, that my grow beds would only require about 22 gallons of water for my fish tanks. Wow, was I way off in thinking of the size a tank had to be for a smaller system, that is until I came here.
I am pretty sure I did my numbers right so let me just post them about my proposed system for introduction into aquaponics and to the forum.
I am proposing for my system (3)-6" diameter X 10' long PVC tubes filled with 1/2" granite gravel. The 10' PVC tube grow bed has (10)-3" diameter holes spaced out 12" on center from each other along the top and is capped at both ends. The grow bed is supplied aerated water from the fish tank via an air/geyser pump (read the thread on that and am impressed), and
[...here's why I'm here] is either allowed to drain back into the fish tank with gravity or is made to flood and drain with a bell siphon back into the fish tank. I haven't been able to decide which system would suit my setup best. I plan on typical garden vegetables like tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, as well as a hop experiment for my beer brewing.
Based on the numbers 1 Lbs fish>2gallons water>4 gallons grow bed gravel, this should net my system at a 22 gallon fish tank with 11 Lbs of fish (in the end I assume) for the 44 gallons of grow bed gravel... correct? I understand that with better filtration I could have more fish, but I am planning on using a 150 gallon fish tank as my starter (planning for growth next year and it was free).
Does this mean I can only have 22 gallons in it, or would 150 gallons of water not be a problem? I am asking assuming one kept the same number of fish and grow bed space as one would have at 22 gallons tank water?
One last question and I'll let your knowledge take over. Any good information on cereal grains grown aquaponically (IE are they good nitrate filters and how do/would you grow grasses in "any" aquaponic system? Whew, got a lot out and hope to get a lot back. Thank you in advance everyone. Now I have to go type a lot in my beer forum.
Backyard Aquaponics
