Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

This means that for each individual system, as long as the suggested maximum fish
culture density isn’t exceeded, the system will work to biofilter all dissolved fish wastes (eg: the
nitrification of all ammonia), to grow all plants with the required amount of nutrients for those
plants and mineralise all solid fish wastes that the fish produce.

The outcomes are as stated in the results table for each individual system. If operators use the fish
densities as the model suggests for these particular systems (while using an average 1% daily feed
rate) then the number of fish in the system, and ultimately, the amount of fish feed those fish eat
and the amount of waste they produce from that feed should be processed, used or converted by the
media bed of the system. This also indicates that most domestic scale, media bed based aquaponic
systems have the ability to operate well and perform all tasks, as long as some basic principles of
design are followed. What the current study proves is that many of the aquaponic systems available
on the market (including those of Backyard Aquaponics), or made at home, have a basic “built in’
ability to perform correctly, all that needs to be taken into consideration is what is the best fish
culture density and daily feed input rate for that particular system.

Finally, there is much precedent for the fact that media bed aquaponic systems operate well across a
wide range of inputs and operating conditions. Therefore, the outcomes of this study are suggested
fish densities and in all likelihood, fish densities and feed rates outside of these modelled results may
still work very well.

The study suggests that, at the maximum fish culture densities stated, the domestic media bed
aquaponic systems that Backyard Aquaponics sells should work very well to biofilter, solids
mineralise and grow plants using the established media bed based aquaponic approach.