Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Barrelponics is a great plan for a cheap beginner aquaponics system. What about the next step up? Has anyone created an instruction pdf of an expandable system made with relatively cheap easy to find parts that is 4 times the size of the barrelponics system? Something that could be a decent enough size to supplement the diets of a small family of say 4 people (2 adults and 2 children). If it was relatively cheap and easy to construct I think we would see more people looking into it. With food/water/land issues becoming a bigger problem all the time I can easily see a future where a good percentage of families would need a low water use garden system.

At what size tank can a decent crop of fish/veggies would this make sense? I was thinking perhaps a 300 gallon rubbermaid feed trough would be the best foundation to start from.

I will document my system build for this forum but I know I will make some bad decisions and my plan will be wasteful.

I too would love some information on this as I am only playing with the barrels at the moment.

I dont know how we ended up with the same user name here, but I will change mine if I figure out how

Ok, now I see the newbie posting ranking....LOL...please excuse me for my brain fart

Depends how many "fish dinners"you would consume per week.For my family,,2Adults 2 children , we eat 4-5 fish meals per week. I figure we need 4 kilo ( about 9 lbs) fish per week, 210 kilo per year. Working on 30 kg fish per 1,000 litres, we need 7,000 lites of tank.DON'T forget VARIETY,,easy to get bored eating the same type of fish day after day. So 3 tanks each 2,000-2,500 litres growing 3 different fish types.The grow beds to support this amount of tank,would be enough to grow greens for a LOT of people,,but it's never hard to give away fresh/organic vegies and herbs.

Newbie, here is the site for the barrel-ponics setup by Travis Hughey

http://www.fastonline.org/content/category/4/15/29/

you can download the Barrel-Ponics manual in pdf format

Chappo I didnt mean fish for most meals that isnt practible. More realistic goal would be to provide 1 fish meal a week (forget variety for the sake of this arguement this is about protein) with all veggies used as often as produced.

So a 625 gallon fish tank (2365 liters) with needed growbeds would be a good size to meet this goal?

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Yes,easily.

as much as I hate saying chappo is rght (as he has been with quite a few of his recent posts!!)

+1 ( 2500 litres will provide at least 1 fish per week.)

IBC's are a nice step up from barrels .
theyre square too so easier to work with

the main problem with trying to supply "one fish dinner per week" that I see is the fish themselves

multiple tanks / divided tanks is what I personally am aiming for as that way I can have groups of fish in different growth stages .
Once I eat all of the fish in my "eating size" tank , I'll fill it with fingerlings then the next tank with eating size fish will be my "eating tank"

Im slowly setting up so that theres 2 bodies of water connected to each lot of growbeds , that way the plants wont go through large chages of "lots of nutrients" then "minimal nutrients"

Trying to design a standard "next size up" is a little more difficult as each situation and location are different. Now over in AU they have Joel who has some nice packaged standard systems that he can go set up for people and get them off to a good start. Around here I know that Aquatic Eco systems and Morningstar Fishermen have some small backyard aquaponic systems they sell but I personally don't think anyone setting up one of those kits will be all that sucessful until they do some learning about the process, at which time, they will probably wish they had designed and built their own system.

I have had a few people (after seeing my set up) say "oh you could build systems for people" to which I say, then when they kill all their fish because they know nothing about the whole process and wouldn't pay attention as I was trying to teach them, they will blame me. No thanks, I believe that Hydroponics, Aquaponics, and fish keeping are all things that people need to learn on their own. Now if some one wanted to pay me a salary to take care of their fish system as well as build it, that might be ok but then it wouldn't be nearly as cost effective a source of food since I'm kinda expensive.

+1 for the comment about wanting more than one tank. Of if one large tank is the only option, it might be reasonable to divide the tank with mesh or cages. Separate tanks can be a good thing to allow maintenance on one while still keeping fish in another.

As for a standard plan for the mid range system, IBCs look like a great container for such a thing but are harder to come by cheap than barrels. Personally, I like the idea of using good pond liner for both beds and tanks. The $$ is hard to beat unless you get your IBC's, barrels, or bathtubs for near free. Then again I'm bias since I have easy to dig ground. Nearly perfect ground temps for the fish, and experience using/plumbing through liner. In a different climate/situation I might favor a ridged tank design.

Ok points taken. I was considering two smaller 300 gallon rubbermaid tanks but the 625 gallon is only 100 bucks more than 1 rubbermaid.

What is the average cost of a IBC?

What would be the cost of a good sized tank liner? Do you double up the liner?

TC can you describe in detail how to plumb through liner? That is the main reason I'm a little wary of using it. Rubbermaid tanks just seem more fool proof and I think most people starting out are fools (including me).

skin fittings and a little silicon sealant will work - worked for me when I placed a small system in my classroom.

The perhaps simplest way I've done for plumbing through a liner has been to simply use a bulkhead fitting and some sort of "backer" (board or bit of rigid plastic) behind the liner for support. That is not the cheapest way but it is really easy, just make sure the bulkhead is long enough to clamp properly on whatever you use as a backer (plywood could be too thick for a small bulkhead fitting.)

The cheapest way I've found for plumbing though liner (and it's pretty simple too) has been to use uniseals
http://www.aquaticeco.com/subcategories/829/Uniseals/uniseal/0
They are a pretty cheap way to plumb though most any tank that isn't too thick. I have actually used uniseals through liner and plywood that is just under 1/2" thick. It is a bit harder to push the pipe through the uniseal with a thicker backing board. It is also difficult to push them through if you don't have a good angle to get the leverage to push. Benefit of doing it this way, you can use a little rubbing alcohol to make the pvc and seal slippery and it will evaporate and not risk the fish. No need to wait days for the silicone to cure to see if it worked.

Perhaps if plumbing a bottom drain into a lined in ground pond, I expect I would make sure to glue all buried pvc and silicone the fittings to the liner just because they would be very difficult to access later. My in ground tank has a vacuum bottom drain that doesn't require a hole in the liner.

Here is a link to early in my thread where I am building the first lined grow beds and installed bulkhead fittings. I later learned that the uniseals would work right through the liner/plywood so have used them for my overflows and some of the newer plumbing through the liners.

I designed my system to produce one fish per day, or a fillet for 4 every 2 days. The systems is going to run in stages. 12 nets each containing 30-50 fish for each of a 12 month grow out cycle. No freezer needed; just fresh fillet at dinner time. All together the system will have something like 80 pounds of fish in it at any given time. So it would require only 320 gallons of water and about 640 gallons of gravel grow bed to give us a couple meals a week and in a real bind that would be enough to stay alive.

Hum, Lets see so the next step up system should probably be in the 400 gallon (fish tank) range?

So What kind of things do people think they would recommend for such a system?

Should it be a system that has hard tanks, grow beds on stands? Or should we work on instructions for more site specific ideas? (this goes mostly to the question of digging/no digging and the use of liner or more $$hard tanks.)

I know the barrelponic idea is meant to be relatively cheap though it often depends on the costs of the materials and if there is a handy place to get any of those materials free or really cheap. I think when I went and price all the materials involved in building the barrelponics system, I came up with a cost of a little under $300 if one had to buy everything (barrels cost of $15 each around here.) What kind of cost should the MK II plans run?

What kind of space should be planed for it?