Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey guys/gals,

I have been looking at aquaponics now for over 18 months and I finally got the courage up to give it a try. I have been writing up set-ups now for a few months and constantly revising them.

This last weekend I finally bit the bullet and start to purchase some equipment so that I can start a layout and see what I can get done. I keep running into obstacles as I go and re-structuring my plans and I was hoping I could bounce some idea's around here to get some help.

I am currently looking at building a small basement setup, which will include a 110 US Gallon stock tank for the fish, up from the original 50 US gallon setup I had planned (changed due to depth of stock tank). I have decided on doing Tilapia fish and have a source from which I can get them. The big problem I have now is figuring out how big of a grow bed I will need. I purchased a 2'x4' ebb and flow grow table from a hydroponics store in the area, but was disappointed to see the depth of it is very shallow. As I have now upgraded the size of the stock tank, I am concerned that I will not have enough media bed to cultivate the bacteria for the nitrification process.

Anyone have any insights they could offer up a complete newbie to the world of aquaponics?

-- Jody

You could just stock to the filtration ability of your bed, but clearly you had a reason for going with a larger fish tank re. the number of fish you could stock.

I'm not sure what the conversions to feet and gallons is, but a good guideline is 1 fish per 20 litres of growbed media, or 3kg of grown-out fish per 100 litres of growbed.

I'd recommend calculating the volume of the growbed and seeing if you are disappointed with the stocking capacity, but in general I would just take the bed back, or plan to use it as an NFT trough in addition to some other grow bed or filtration, but I'm guessing u are space limited.

There may be other disadvantages to having an overly shallow or deep media bed, in relation to planting space vs root ball size/density and water circulation in constant flood systems, most people to with 25-30cm as a good depth.

P.s. start learning the metric system it will help a lot on this site. Plus it is much easier, no need to remember weird conversion ratios between measurements of different magnitude.

In all measurement classes (length, mass, volume) going from one measurement magnitude to the nex t(e.g. millilitres->centerlitres->litres->kilolitres->etc....) is as simple as multiplying or dividing by 10, or shifting the decimal place left or right. In additional you can switch between some measurement classes easily. For example, one litre of water is equal to 1000 cubic centermetres.

......okay sorry, finished my condescending and presumptuous rant.

Sorry about all the imperial measurements. Canada "uses" metric and I understand it, however a lot of the products we get are from the US, so we are stuck in limbo on actual standards. Thus the use of imperial measurements on all my gear. I so wish that I could stick with metric and not the mind boggling imperial measurements.

I have converted things and got the inside measurements of my grow bed. It looks like I am going with a 416.4L stock tank, and my grow bed will have a volume of 43.55L of grow media.

I upped my original stock tank just because I wasn't comfortable with the depth of water for the fish. I have more space I could use, but I was trying to keep costs down originally (in case I crash and burn hard). I would love to have a proper fish density and the grow beds to match, and since I have put in the effort on the new stock tank, larger stand, and what not, I would love to make all the rest match up; even if it means more investment.