Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello everyone,

I'm Tony from Williamston, Michigan. I am a husband and father of 2 girls. We like to live a healthy lifestyle and only heard of AP about a year ago. Since then, it's been on my mind and this winter I'm doing something about it. Several months ago, we tried getting our feet wet with a simple Hydroponic setup and some lettuce, spinach, kale, and arugula from http://www.mypatriotsupply.com (a bit pricy but non-gmo and fresh seeds). Well, it was fun but short lived... our setup only allowed for 10 net pots and now we are out of fresh lettuce (spinach, kale, & arugula were small and short lived) . I've started more but we need a bigger system to accommodate our families needs.

Growing Arrangements:
We live in a ranch home with a full but unfinished basement. All of the open, unused space below our feet should be good for something, right? I've got a very large utility room that will be used for our AP room. The temperature down there maintains about 66 degrees F year round and the lettuce loved it. I've included a design I drew up using Google SketchUp (free & simple CAD software). It is based off others we liked after searching around online. It seems to save space and allows use of vertical space. I plan on using either 6' or 10' sections of 4" PVC pipe. Should be either 30 or 50 plants (depending on length of pipe I use) and that's as far as I have planned. I am not sure what way I want to go for the FT or FT's... I'm debating on whether I should build my own box/es with pond liners or use plastic livestock water tanks? I cannot use the big totes that many use because of the stairway access to the basement only has a 30" door opening. My wife dislikes my crazy idea of using a small above ground pool (but I like the idea of pre-constructed ). Ideally, we'd like to grow trout and/or perch, not sure if we are keen on tilapia. Plus I love the idea of just walking downstairs to catch fresh trout! She thinks that crawfish/yabbies would be awesome but to me they seem like they would be a lot of work (keeping them from killing each other?).

We plan on continuing with different lettuce varieties, as well as re-experimenting with the previously failed spinach, kale, etc... I believe they failed because we were late transplanting them from the starter cubes. I also anticipate that this is only the beginning of a much larger scale based on just about everybody's "first try" post I've read.

Any recommendations on tank size, number of fish, starter fish so I don't lose a ton of $ getting it up and running/balancing levels?

Thank you in advance for the responses!

Welcome to the forum Tony, Ive seen a very similar design on the forum, Ill try dig it up for you.

I kind of let it all out here in the meet & greet section didn't I? I'll move these questions towards the discussion section. Might get more action there anyway


Charlie,
Thank you for the welcome, and I'd appreciate any assistance on the setup you can find.