Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

freshmeat here....plan on building a 8x10 lean-to aquaponic green house , ground is leveled , block foundation and framing is going up after the holidays. ibc tote and barrels coming from my job for free, just have a couple hundred questions. i'm going to use the 300gallon tote for the f/t , going to cut 2 or 3 barrels in half for g/b's . so according to what i'm reading i need 1 lb of fish for every cubic foot of grow bed , so lets say the barrels come to 32 cubic feet i would need 32 lb of fish to produce ....what would be the best way to stock this ? go catch a couple channel cats ?, or buy like a hundred little goldfish? , if gold fish, about how long would it take for them to grow big enough to provide me with enough nutes ?... assuming ideal conditions....i'm not worried about harvesting fish until i get comfortable with the whole thing .figure i'd be a fish killer the first time around ..

Welcome whitey

Good to see another North Carolinian on the forum.....

Im located in wilmington, nc.... southeast coast....

Yes the accepted rule of thumb is 1 cubic foot of bio-filter for every pound of fish (grown out)

but in a new system, you may want to under stock until the grow beds build up enough bacteria to handle a maxed system....

jT

You don;t have to be a fish killer first time around, plenty of people can do it with no experience and harvest their first full fish crop without problems.

If you use 2 barrels for growbeds I'd go for about 15-20 fish, for 3 barrels 20-25 fish..

ok thanks for the input..on to the next question ,i have read about adding pond water to the f/t to get the bacteria going , anyone have a guesstimate about how much i should add per 100 gallons of fish tank, and would this be harmfull to store bought fish ....and do i add it before the fish and let it cycle thru for a while or just put it in about the same time as the fish ....never kept fish so this part of the operation is greek to me , i got some books from the library on fish but couldn't find anything on aquaponics , so if anyone has any good reading suggestions i would be gratefull....thanks