Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Being a complete noob to this site and a natural sticky beak , I was interested to see what the reasons were behind folks undertaking the road to aquaponics?

Personally Having been a breeder of tropical fish for the aquarium industry, I was looking for a suitable way to reuse the water that was being drained from my breeding tanks.
Because I have so many aquariums trying to plumb them all into a successful aquaponic setup would be a nightmare [ I currently operate some 25 aquariums most of which are 6' x 2' x2'].

This has led me to my current setup and although not strictly complying with the ap guidelines, we are currently reaping the rewards by way of fresh Strawberries,Tomatoes, Lettuce and various herbs.

This is a rough of the system as it stands now


So how about you?


Cheers
Vegieman

I have always been interested in hydroponics but was uncomfortable with the artificial nutrient approach. I also love the idea of providing edible fish when I saw you could do both I was in

I rarely changed my FT water. It was such then that I could only keep the hardiest of fish, and at a very low stocking density.
I came up with the idea like you to filter my water through plants. Initially I thought tanks of water plants, then I thought of percolating it through soil (but shuddered at the leachate produced) When discussing this with my FIL, he told me about aquaponics. Now a year and a half after I started my AP system, I have connected my indoor FT, so that I am forever freed of waterchanges.
Even if I need to change water, it can be done outside, where the mess is less likely to hurt.
So instead of filtering my tank, I added 10,000 more litres outside, and filtered them, THEN I added filtration to my tank :-)
The bug is so easy to catch.
Regarding plumbing all your breeding tanks? Not really a nightmare, just drain and plumb each one slowly, it would take you 1/2 a day each, if you're as slow and lazy as I am.
If you check out my system (see link below) you will see how I plumbed my indoor tank.

I think google did it. Was looking at hydro and saw a picture of a fish in the water. I didn't have any in my hydro system. Got a link for this place and have since made a large mess in my yard. It's okay, it now matches the rest of my world.

KudaPucat
The only real drama I have is that if one the tropical tanks takes on something like whitespot,this would then lead to the fish pond being contaminated and therefore a great set back [not to mention the value of the fish both in the fishroom and in the garden the like of wild caught Kipilli Frontosa Cichlids etc. .]

The fishroom already has a drainage system for topping up tanks and doing clean outs but this had been getting added straight to the growing beds. This system now runs into the outside pond and from there is trickle fed to the garden. I am sure that there is a way and one day I will work it out, but in the meantime I am going to try to establish a larger fish tank and new GBs ready.

Cheers

In an attempt to save money! and to keep my aging brain active

We know the first part worked pitty about the second

I'm new here and I am heading well away from that one

I got sick of my vegies dying because I forgot to water them. I also got sick of pulling out weeds and digging.
Also I couldn't afford a boat to go fishing.

I hear ya there!

In an attempt to spend all my disposable income

I got here from the hydroponic gardening side of things. I hated dumping spent nutrients even though the landscaping loved me for it. See my soil is very sandy and water/nutrients move very quickly through and out into surface waters here in Florida. Now I have an indoor aquarium system where I can grow my lettuce inside when it is too hot out in the summer. Granted, I didn't start tinkering with Aquaponics inside, I had to test out the theories and operation with outdoor systems first.

But of course Aquaponics is addictive so I now have 3 completely separate systems. One indoors for summer lettuce and year round house plants. The original test system barrel ponics turned pee ponics and used for testing all sorts of ideas (probably gonna get a duckweed addition or something this spring) and finally the Big system 1000 + gallons of fish tanks and ?1500+ gallons worth of flood n drain gravel with aprox 150 fish currently anywhere from tiny fingerlings up to 4+ lb channel catfish.

All this from wanting to grow lettuce in the summer indoors?

Growing up we had a garden and did not eat much store bought food. I just got tired of eating that tasteless crap from the store. I started dirt gardening, but my soil is really sorry here and there a lot of rock so it was way to much work. Next I tried the earthbox which grew amazingly well, but it would bee to expensive to buy enough of those boxes to raise much. Next I constructed my own version of the earthboxes only to decide that they did not hold up well. From there I got involved in hydroponics. There was much misinformation on the net so I tried every single form of hydroponics; EEB, NFT, DWC, Aero, Wick, foggerponics.. In the end i decided that flood and drain (eeb) was best; not for growth or production, but for cost, and reliability if there was a failure. After growing hydroponicly for a while I started looking into ways to make my own nutrient and then ways to grow organically. Thats when one of the google searches lead me to here here. The rest is history (an so is my money )

Growing the AP way makes a lot of sense to me. Organic, less work that soil, less water, no digging in rock and sorry clay, no composting for years.

Vegieman,
Ya know, if you have your breeding tanks all set up individually and want to keep them all isolated, it isn't such a big deal to make each tank hooked to it's own grow bed into a small AP system. With the stocking density normal in Aquariums, I wouldn't expect you too need all that much grow bed and plants to take care of one tank. Only issue likely is getting enough light to growbeds placed in close proximity to your tanks and if you were to place the grow beds outside you might have temperature issues with recirculating to your tropical fish.

Hum, good luck in any case!