Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I'm new to the site (although I've been reading for sometime) and Aquaponics. In the past years I've done many things with indoor micro gardens using LEDs, CFLs, and even Flourescent lights. I'm curious if anyone else has experimented with Micro set-ups. I realize my PH is going to be hard to control, but I'm up for the challenge (having a small res, I imagine it will be a lot like the salt-water aquariums the girlfriend's father is obsessed with. Pain to get right, but once set they will remain steady and regulate themselves). Buffering with egg shells and/or sea shells will be excellent.

I'm moving in with the girlfriend and though she doesn't know it yet I'll be taking over the large sliding windows on the east facing side of her apartment. I had a few questions regarding the set-up I'm thinking of (and sketching over and over @ work).

The idea I have in my mind is to create 3 small micro-beds out of 4" pvc piping, having them split the large windows in 3rds (I'll put up a few drawings later for better explanation).
So until then I'm just curious of any advice for someone starting out (any micro-advice I would be grateful for, but all advice is welcome). I'm torn between a couple different set-ups incorperating the 4" pvc pipes. (I'll include some sketches when I get home as to better explain what I'm thinking and to get opinions of some of you legends). If I had to describe it

I plan to use goldfish to get things rolling and Ideally would like to have a more yummy fish stock at some point (even if it is only 3-5 fish). I've not decided on very much yet as I want to make sure everything is KISS.

A few questions that might help people help you with ideas.

How big a fish tank or Aquarium?

How much space do you actually have for it?

I personally will try to steer you away from the PVC pipe ideas. I'll probably try to get you to do something with say widow box planters or feed troughs or something like that. The PVC pipe set ups are kinda tricky, especially for a beginner.

Here is a pic that I definitely don't expect you to emulate but hopefully it will give you some ideas.


In this set up there is a 4' aquarium sitting on a low shelf with a no holes overflow in addition to a venturi drain through a hole in the bottom of the aquarium. The level in the aquarium is constant (does not fluctuate.) The venturi drain and no holes overflow feed into the nearest 5 gallon bucket. All 5 buckets are connected together with 1 1/2" pipe using uniseals. End bucket has loop siphon that drains into a sump tank below the shelf. All 5 buckets fill and drain together. They are filled with river rock and washed sea shells. The pH is rock solid at 7.6. The pump is in the sump tank and runs all the time lifting water back up to the aquarium which overflows to buckets and so on. Sump bin needs to be a bit bigger than half the size of the "grow beds" or buckets. This is because the gravel usually takes up a bit over half of the space in the buckets. You want a bit of extra volume in the sump so that the pump is never likely to run dry and you don't have to be there to top up water every day. If the sump is too small, when the grow beds empty, the sump will likely overflow all over the place.

Benefits to doing it this way; 1-the fish tank level stays constant, 2-the pump is in relatively clean sump water and therefore less likely to clog with fish poo and uneaten food.
Drawbacks of doing it this way; you need an extra tank or bin for the sump and the space for it.

Flood and drain in gravel beds of some sort has multiple benefits.
1-gravel beds act as solids filter
2-gravel beds act as bio filter
3-gravel beds provide a place to grow plants
4-flood and drain wets the grave well for bio filtration
5-flood and drain provides good aeration

As to growing in front of a window, as you may be aware, most plants are going to want more light than that unless it is a very sunny window.

Good luck with whatever you decide to build.

Thanks for the reply. That set-up looks great but a little to large for my situation. I will be using a gravel bed in my tubes to use with the NFT that I'm planning (again I'll get some pics so you can see what I'm talking about). I also am considering getting back to soldering and creating some LED arrays to help mitigate some of the "lack of sunlight" I'll be getting in the late afternoon. It is extremely bright from sun rise until about 1:00p currently. But yes I feel that I will have to supplment the sunlight with something. LEDs being very efficent and more green than even CFLs will most likely be what I use, especially since they have an extremely low form factor.

I'm going to measure out the space and figure out the biggest tank possible that I would be able to use. I plan on placing it directly infront of the set-up on some sort of table and creating a res underneath (hidden, as much as possible). Since this is going to be in our living room it will have to look decent otherwise I'll never hear the end of it.

The doors are a double-sliding door with I'd say (eyeballing it) about 6-7ft. across. I've not ran it past the girlfriend yet so I don't know if she'll allow me to use the entire space or only half of it so she can still use the patio... So more details will be coming soon as they develop.

I expect you had better plan on keeping the patio accessible.

My reason for trying to steer you away from doing gravel in the tubes is that it isn't all that conducive to flood and drain that way and roots of many plants have a nasty habit of clogging things up and causing overflows. Something more like an open top trough that is a bit larger would probably be much easier to make work. I've seen some nice plastic planter boxes that would probably serve the purpose while looking nicer than a pvc pipe frame in the window.

Just a thought.

That was one of the design questions I had. Would cutting the top of the tubes off and filling them with expanded clay pellets be better than doing a NFT/gravel hybrid or just not having any at all.

I imagine that set-up would work better with pulling plants out of the system and adding plants back to it. Thank you for the insight though. This is why I'm thinking everything through so I can prepare for any problems or oversights that may come with a system that isn't thought out entirely.

Welcome Fishygrown!

Check out Jay's system he built for a window space:

viewtopic.php?p=42382#p42382

I have a small system out of two aquariums. Indoors is better because with such a small water volume the temps go up and down like mad.

Thanks! Good to be here!

I have seen some pretty amazing vertical grows, but for some reason never considered making one for aquaponics... I may have to go back to the drawing room. I think just off the top of my head that given my certain situation I'll have to use supplmental light to get anything productive and having a vert set-up may make that harder for me...and uglier to outsider I imagine. But that is a very impressive set-up. At what temp does PVC melt? +rep to Jay. Very impressive idea->execution!

They make square 4 and 6 inch pvc fencing post. I have used these at the office for hydroponics. Flood and drain works great this way with a stand pipe. To avoid spills glue a small .5 or .75 inch pipe in the bottom of the tube that is cut about 4 inches shorter than the large tube. This way if roots ever clog the flow the small pipe will bypass the root zone and prevent a spill. I even grew a cherry tomato in a setup like this and never had a problem with it. The roots did fill half the tube!

Great idea. Would you still fill the tubes with the ECP or just leave them empty? I know how important the bacteria is. I plan on making a simple changable-mechanical filter to keep large particles out of the tubes to keep matainence low.

I ran it past the girlfriend and she was surprisingly onboard. I was shocked. So this is what we're working with. I plan on only using half of it so we can still use the sliding door, but if things get crazy we might end up using both (we're on the ground floor anyway, so its not really that hard to walk out the door to the patio.

I filled mine with gravel and used flood and drain. I also did a version where solo drink cups were filled with sand; also flood and drain. You need a bio filter anyway so you should use a small sized gravel I would think.

If you want to get scientific then you can calculate the ammonia load for the amount of food you are feeding the fish then calculate surface areas..

Oh, forgot to say.. You can go vertical too. Just flood from one to the next. Set your timer to run a little longer than needed to get all the levels full.

Once its up and running check the stand pipe's "weep" holes ever week and be sure they stay root free and drain the water; to avoid drowning your plants.

This is what the 4 inch square PVC fence post looks like; as used in fogger ponics.

I'm fairly familiar with the system you posted dan. I had a buddy who grew grapes with that set-up. I was curious if you could do aeroponics with aquaculture? I imagine an aeroponic set up might even help bacteria, but I also imagine the cost of getting enough foggers to convert the liquid to fog might be a little pocket heavy and you'd run into other problems...I can think of a few not trying very hard (but I'm no expert).


I'd like to get scientific with it. It's my experience that mathematical equations used as tools can help significantly with planning and the sort. I'm hardly a mathemetician. I'm more of an idea man/artist, but I do believe in working smarter, not harder.

I imagine such an equation would involve a number of variable (fish type, food type, etc.). I downloaded the sketch program and will be trying to throw together a schematic for you guys so you can see what I'm thinking. I'm considering the vertical set-up but as I said I will have to use supplemental lighting. I purchased about 600 blue/red LEDs (4:1) ratio which is great since photosynthesis happens @ those exact color spectrums. I've done some experimenting with them and I was amazed how well leafy-green plants did under them. I also noticed that the skin on my hands was much more healthier. I read an article about MIT research healing properties of that spectrum...but I'm beginning to get off topic.

Overall I'm here to learn and contribute.

I'm still designing things. I've already changed things based on what I've been reading, but I was hoping that I could pick the brain of the forum and find out some specific things I should be concerned about (even if they're obvious).

I'm still thinking about a couple things. Scalability, ease of maintenance (which will be rought regardless of what I do being that its going to be extremely small).

I have decided to use the 4" PVC tubes as the grow beds split into 3 seperate growbeds. My fill/drain is a little fuzzy.

This is my idea so far:
3 grow beds drain into my sump. The sump is then pumped back into the fish tank. The fishtank is pumped above the growbeds into a small "sump" (we'll call it an airbox) which the bottom is filled with a large rock which will include a numerous amount of airstones. The drains will be about 4"-6" inches above the bottom of the "air box". The "air box" filters drains into the grow beds (all 3). I'm thinking of doing a continious flow system, but again I'm pretty fuzzy on the exact mechanics of it. I know what I want I'm just not sure what's going to be the best route.

Would siphon draining be an option? The growbed tubes will be filled with expanded clay pellets. I'm taking measure to prevent clogging. I won't build this until I'm sure I've covered every single problem that may arise. What should I be looking for?

If you make your "air box" big enough with enough gravel like substance for surface area for your bacteria as well as the mechanical filtering, then you might not really need media in your NFT tubes.

Perhaps you might look into having a gravel filled more traditional flood and drain grow bed. They make nice stock tanks and feed troughs that might be appropriate for such a bed in a small system as you are talking about. If you wanted that could be flood and drain using auto siphons or you could simply use it as your air box/media grow bed for your bio/solids filtering and let it feed your tubes.

I don't think flood and drain is very practical for 4" tubes though it might be interesting to try out outdoors on the patio in the summer where an overflow won't mess up the carpet.