Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I really think you'd have to up your fish production to get any decent plant production.

I dont think you will get much with floating grow beds. My flood and drain beds work about twice as well as my floating beds. What I would do is dig a shallow trough on the outside of the pond about 3 to 4 feet wide and as long as you want and about 4-6 inches deep. Line it with pond liner and fill it with gravel. Then I would pump into it untill full and then allow it to drain. A pump in the pond with a float switch in the grow bed would be great. Then when the bed was full it would shut off the pump and then slow drain back to the pond. This is assuming that the bank is high enough to allow this.

Hi Cjin
I have pond envy!!!!!!!!
Looks great
You would have to stock masses of fish to produce adequate levels of nutirent
My suggestion would be have a smaller setup that is a closed system separate from the pond and utilise the pond water for topping up the system and progressively add more grow beds

Would the smaller setup need fish as well? Or I guess I could add a little extra ammonia for fish-less cycling? Which reminds me - I've read a little here about "humonia" has anyone used chicken poo for this? I'll try the search button.

Chickens and rabbits have been tried. And where as they do add to the nutrients most people frown on the addition of fecal matter from warm blooded animals.
The system I drew above would be great with marginal plants such as water cress. It might not have enough nutes for other plant types. Another option would be to plant a dirt garden and water it with pond water. You would not get the filter action but you would have increased plant growth in the dirt garden. Are the ponds lined or dirt bottom?

I know of a guy that has an aquaculture farm. He has several ponds that are run about the same as you described for yours. He also has about 20-24' foot diameter tanks. He was planning on digging a large trench and filling it with river stone. The water from the tanks would run through the river stone before entering the holding ponds. This way he could pump about 50% of his water from the holding pond. Right now he is pumping about 8000 GPM ground water to run the setup. Here are some pics from his farm. First photo is of the larger ponds you can see an aerator in the closest pond. You can also see one of the 4000 gpm pumps on the far left. Second photo is of Sturgeon (his main product) the largest one you can see is about 6 feet long. The last photo is of golden rainbows. This is a genetically pure trout about 1 in 10,000 is golden like this. They are called Palomino trout I think. Strange to look at.

The ponds are dirt bottomed. And, yes, I have a dirt garden.

Funny because my husband used to get mad when I watered the garden with well water instead of pond water. The pond water kept clogging up my watering can! The compromise was that he set up tubing to use water from a spring on the property. I fertilized with manure tea in a 55 gallon barrel that he added a spigot to. He wasn't thrilled with the manure tea barrel on the deck but it was a better gravity feed to the garden.

This stuff require tolerant spouses, eh?

I'd add a +1 that your fish waste nutrients would be too dilute to get what is considered normal AP type production.

On the other hand, you could build chinampas.

I'm betting that tilapia are fine with high-nutrient water since they delight in eating any algae they can scrape or filter from their environment, while almost any other fish culture (in tanks or ponds or whatever) would end up choked in algae if it were in the sun and the nutrient levels rose high enough to be usable for AP. As soon as I remove tilapia from an AP tank algae grows on any places sunlight falls.

What about catfish? The water level can get pretty low during hot dry summers (not a problem last year )

Well, I can't test the nutrient levels in the pond till the ice breaks anyway. 3 months till it warms up to a decent temp too.

Are you kidding? I understand that many folks consider the best time to be out on a lake is when you don't need a boat: "Don't delay! Pull out your ice drill, fishing rod, and test kit today!"

Not that you would get me sitting out there for long.... *grin*

Ice fishing is a big deal in Vermont but I think mass quantities of alcohol get consumed. This might screw up test results...

...But it's too late for that! We're on to sugaring/mud season. Mass quantities of alcohol get consumed during this sport too. Just can't drink so much that you slip on the ice/slush/mud and fall in the fire.

Mud season is a sport? Is that like baseball season?

I do miss the smell of sugar steam, but not the sensation of wet semi-numb toes.