Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello everyone.

I'm TOTALLY new to aquaponics. In fact I just heard of it this week and just started to do the research. I am wondering if it is possible to use a pond instead of a fish tank. I have a 1/2 acre pond on my property that is stocked with fish. I could easily place a pump into it to water the plants. It is a natural pond. There have been no fertilizers or additives in it.

Would this work.

If you like, you can e-mail me directly with your answers at tcandela@aol.com

Not likely to work. You need to have fairly large fish populations to create enough nutrients for plant growth. In the case of a 1/2 acre pond you would probably need 10,000 fish (just a guess but a lot in any case) Better to make a smaller system and use pond water to top it off and fill it.

I agree with Machineman - it may need a lot more fish, however, I think it would be a lot of fun trying...

Well certainly be good fun fishing....

I'm sure the pond could be greatly useful in providing food for you and family. However, I would not expect to hook it up to a grow bed and have it mirror what happens with a standard media based flood and drain aquaponics system.

The rules for a heavily stocked flood and drain media system are fairly well established here and we know pretty well how to set them up to work. Challenges arise when you have vastly more fish tank than you do filtration capacity. And to tell the truth, few of us have figured out how to get a swimming pool sized fish tank to play well with only a few grow beds, let alone a "LAKE!!!!!"

A natural pond is probably already well balanced and likely not leaving too much excess nutrients left over to grow veggies with.

However, you might be able to stock the pond more heavily and feed the fish for more growth and if you were to time things right, some grow beds attached to it might find themselves being part of the new natural balance. You would probably have to add additional aeration to the pond in addition to pumping some water through your grow beds.

Or you could just leave it a natural pond and take advantage of it in a permaculture design and perhaps use it as a resource to assist you in setting up a more contained aquaponics system.

Good Luck with it.

I was building floating cages form my pond before I moved. A 3'x3' cage will hold about 40 catfish I know it seems like a lot but if you put in too few they fight. They might give you some good fish without alot of work. You could always plant maginals like Watercress. A pond like yours would probably support a few cages like this without any other help. You will need as much depth under the cages a possible to keep the wast from building up and causing problems.