Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello all, just another first time poster who gained interest in building my first indoor small-scale aquaponics system.

The questions:

1. For the aquarium size, what is the minimum capacity required in order to raise edible sized fish? (not planning to eat them btw, at least not until I gain more experience -- I just want a larger sized system as opposed to something minimal; it's more fun )

2. The water pump: Will this pump work / be powerful enough?

http://www.lainginc.com/pdf/LTI%20D5%20 ... 6pages.pdf

I have no clue what "Pump curves" mean, my model is the D5-38/810 N. I have no clue how to read the charts. But I'll guess that:

*With the pump's speed controller at level 5 at 24V drawing 30W, the pump head will be 16 feet with a flow rate of 5 GPM.

*With the pump's speed controller at level 2, at ??V drawing roughly 5W, the pump head will be roughly 3 feet with a flow rate of roughly 1.3 GPM

3. Are measuring instruments really necessary? (pH, ammonia, nitrate levels, and who knows what else...)

4. If I'll be using grow lights, is it possible build my first system from scratch for less than 250 Canadian dollars? (I do not need to buy the pump I listed in point #2)

Thanks for reading, and I'll probably come back to post even more questions

1. 100-200 litres (25 - 50 gal)
2. I don't know. Too hard to research that pump on my iPhone
3. YES. Absolutely. Unless you're fond of unexplained mass fish deaths
4. I'm not sure what Canadian dollars are worth, nor how much things cost over there. I'd guess you'd have a chance. Pump and growlights will be the pricey bits.

Hay there and welcome!!!!!

Do lots of reading here on the forum. Basic info and useful info are good sections to read completely. Then you might want to pick out some threads from the member system section and read them so you can hopefully learn from other's mistakes so you don't have to make them yourself.

As to testing. You don't need special meters. We recommend the Freshwater Master Test kit that uses test tubes and droppers to test for
Ammonia
Nitrite
Nitrate
pH
pH high range
Those are the primary tests you should be able to do and it would also be a good idea to have a way to measure water temperature in your fish tank.

Size of fish tank for edible fish. Well I have had a few edible size tilapia in a 40 gallon aquarium before but it made me uncomfortable to see them in there and they were also able to jump out and they were rather on the small end of edible size. I personally would probably call 50 gallons the bare minimum for edible size fish and you won't be growing very many out very big in a tank that size. 100-150 gallons would be far better but that might be getting into the realm of stock tanks instead of aquarium. Now if you are not planning on eating the fish in the near future, then you can start with whatever size aquarium you have handy, goldfish do just fine as the poo producers in an AP system.

Pump sizing. You want to move the equivalent of the volume of your fish tank each hour at the minimum. So figure out how high above the water surface you will have your grow beds, that is the head. Then see how many gallons per minute the pump can do. Multiply by 60 minutes to get the gallons per hour. That will be your max fish tank size provided you will run the pump all the time. So if you get 5 gallons per minute from the pump, theoretically the pump could handle a 360 gallon fish tank. In real life, I would not expect the pump to serve more than a 200 gallon fish tank.

Grow lights.......
T8 Florescent work lights could be made to serve.

Hmmm, okay I don't think it's possible to go above 200 L aquarium size as I'm limited to space by the grow bed. Roughly, the largest grow bed I can have is:

20" by 50" by 12" = 12000 in³

Now I still need to do more learning for the grow bed section of the AP. If the depth (12") is too deep, then I'll have to readjust the size of my aquarium in relation to that. I have no clue what sort of plants I want to grow, I have not looked into that. I am not following any books so the learning process is unorganized and A.D.D.and not optimally linear as I learn from free resources on the internet.

To sum things up, should I first go shopping for a grow bed that will fit in my room, and then get the corresponding aquarium for that?

Yes, match the fish tank to the growbed. 12" is one of the good depths for growbeds too

Edit: The laing pumps are very well known as being excellent quality. They are used a lot in computer water cooling.

Edit Edit: Makes sure you get the plastic, not the brass model.

Yep that's what I used it for. It's got bad history though, I think. I had 2.5% tincture of iodine running through my water cooling loop. I'm not sure if there would be any left over particles of iodine in the water pump even after cleaning. Wouldn't want to poison the fish and plants...

Run something that dissolves iodine through it for a while.

12 inches is a perfect depth for grow beds.

Iodine might not be good for a system in high quantity but if the pump is well rinsed then the amount in a system would be highly diluted. I believe there was a member that used blue barrels that had contained Iodine in their previous life, perhaps the iodine residue slowed the cycling process but didn't stop it. I might be more worried about what the tincture was made with but if it is food safe, then with good washing/rinsing and dilution I would feel safe with the AP system.

As far as learning about AP. I've never read an AP book. Almost All I know about AP came directly from this forum which I think I discovered in December of 2007.

Actually to be more precise:

Joined: Thu Dec 06, 2007 1:13 am