Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

At last - after many months of dashed hopes - we have finally been given the go-ahead to build our unit in a 45 feet square purpose built unit.

What we plan is to have 3 x round tanks 98" wide x 33" deep (holding about 3200 litres each) with each tank feeding approx. 6000 litres of growbed.

We intend to have common carp in one tank and rainbow trout in the other two tanks with salad crops, legumes and brassicas being grown in clay ball beds.

When it comes to stocking with fish we seek your advice as to stocking density as we get a little bit confused working on the figures of 6:1:2
(kilos fish to tank litres to growbed litres.)

We will also be having several smaller tanks for developing fish like fingerlings upwards and for emergency sick bay - God forbid - we are trying to cover all eventualities.

We shall keep a photographic record from breaking ground to full operation to going mental!

All advice and help gratefully received.
WD and OH

congratulations! Well done and worth the wait!

Remember that ratio is for extreme cases.
More likely you will run 2-3kg : 100L tank : 150L grow bed

Congrats WD
That planning permission has been a long time coming but now you have it.. full steam ahead.

Jaymie might have been on that berry cidre again,
Not too easy to fit 2-3kg of fish in a litre of water

I'll fix it up now

Hi all

First a big thanks to Hex for putting us onto the tanks/grow beds which worked out at £79 a piece and hold 9 x 50 litre bags of hydroton. We have a chap coming over in the week to give us an estimate for fabricating stands for the grow beds probably out of steel box section.

Jaymie- as a person who is vastly experienced in aquaponics your reply has given me confidence as I thought I was the only person to fumble my ratios. Put us right.

This project is going to take a long time to get right and keeping a record of it all should help others. SOOOOO exciting.

WD

God luck WD.... look forward to seeing the system develop

That's fantastic news WD. Full steam ahead with nothing stopping you now.

Hi WD
Glad to hear the growbeds were suitable for the task, I guess they must be quite sturdy?
when you get the stands sorted out they will look the business

There`s some nasty weather heading your way later on...don`t forget to batton down the hatches.

Hex
The tanks are fairly sturdy but once they have clay balls, water and plants in them they will weigh quite a lot so we have to have very strong stands.

As for the weather - we are 300 feet up with nothing between us and the Wicklow mountains in Ireland but the Irish Sea and we are used to the wind causing havoc. Had the roof off a couple of times and the power conks out too many times to count. We just get on with it ,plenty of candles, wind turbine to run the pumps in the hydro., and wait out the blow. Dim problem as we say here.

Just finished a meeting with the contractor who will build the unit and he is talking lots of money. Tomorrow we lay out the plans to the sponsors.

Keep you posted.WD