Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I haven't started my system yet and probably won't until Spring 2012. I have a friend who grows all kinds of exotic plants in a greenhouse year-round. He gave me a 500 gallon/2000 liter polyethylene brine tank he had used for one of his plants that didn't work out. I've done a lot of reading around the site and I think I'll go with a CHIFT PIST system since it is fairly simple and my tank is tall. I'm a little concerned about getting enough grow bed volume but I think that will work out. This is the tank:



My son had to plug holes in the bottom with rubber stoppers and it has held water very nicely:



I haven't decided on the kind of fish I'd like to keep yet. Native fish around here that would likely work out well would be black bullhead (catfish) or maybe yellow perch. We also have white perch.

I have also thought of mirror carp but I would have to buy them as there aren't something caught around here. My parents are originally from Hungary so I don't have the aversion to eating carp like most people do in the U.S.

Anyway, I'll keep reading some more.

Welcome Pike!



You work out the number of fish for the filtration you have. Say you have 400L of grow bed. Although you have 2000L you can only get as many fish as the 400L worth of grow bed would allow.

Also talapia might be a good fish. Self breeding and fast growing

G'day Pike....

Nice big fish tank... That's definitely a contender for a chift pist system, wouldn;t want to try and dig it in...

I don't know what your catfish are like there but I had some catfish from our Western Australian South West rivers and in two years they were almost the same size as when I put them in. The member at Onslow in Western Australia has said the same about their growth rate even in warm water.

I didn't think of that. That makes sense. From reading here, I thought you needed to exchange all the water in your FT through the grow bed at least once an hour. It makes more sense that you only need to run the necessary volume per hour given your fish 'load'. This is why I'm going to need the entire fall/winter to figure this out!

The only issue with tilapia is the temperature. I would need to keep the tank in a greenhouse of sorts and it would need to be heated to maintain a water temperature of 75-80. It's just not feasible considering the cost to heat the water. They would have to be harvested in the fall since the tank would reach freezing temperatures in the winter, so it would be a one season affair. I love eating tilapia but it's not going to work out for me.

LOL, that sounds like my sweet onions this season. They came out about the same size I put them in!

The wild black bullhead don't grow very large, maybe 1/4-1/2 pound at the most. I think they are way overpopulated in the local ponds and they are stunted as a result. I actually think that with proper feeding they could easily get to 1 pound or more. Maybe wishful thinking.

I also thought about rainbow or brown trout. Ironically, I have a small trout stream that runs in my backyard that has a decent population of wild brook trout. I think that the rainbow and brown trout would not be able to tolerate the middle of summer in my future FT. But I have no clue as to how warm the tank actually gets.

Yes, I like the idea of a big tank. My friend also tried his hand at aeroponics and has two large tanks. He has no need for them so he offered them to me. The only issue is how much weight/pressure the walls can handle. Filled completely with water, the sides bulge a little according to him. I'm thinking of filling one with pea gravel for the grow bed and the second one as a sump. So I've been essentially given all the hardware for a chift pist system except for some piping and a pump, assuming they can handle the gravel and water.

Welcome to the AP world.

You still need to cycle your fish tank volume every hour for the filtration of the water to remove the solids and clean your tank. Chift Pist is the only way to go. Many safety factors included by that process. Plenty of time to read, learn, and plan the perfect system if you are going to wait another year. I wish I had learned more before I jumped in.

Got it. I still have to filter the entire volume per hour but the size of the grow bed will limit the number/weight of the fish kept in the FT.