Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey all, I'm in the process of designing my first system. Living in an apartment it has to be indoors in living space, so area is limited.

My plan is to have about 270 litre (71gal) aquarium, which I already have, as the fish tank on the floor. Then I'm hoping to fit 2 levels of growing beds on top of it, I'm planning on using some plastic boxes from IKEA for these. I'm hoping to get 3 boxes 50 litres (13 gal) each on the lower, main level. And then either the same boxes or something a bit shallower on the higher level with similar surface area. Everything will be lighted by DIY LED fixtures and I'll have a timer based flood and drain. The structure I'll build from wood. I'm planning to grow mainly leafy greens and maybe try a tomato or something.

I have quite a few questions at this point about the design. Mostly I'm concerned about vertical space. The room is 250cm (98") tall. My aquarium is 52cm (20") and main grow beds 28cm (11"). So from the bottom I'll have aquarium-access space for aquarium-grow bed-growing space-light-grow bed-growing space-light. If I assume lights are 10cm (4") tall each and I'd need about 20cm (8") to access the aquarium, I'd have 100cm (40") for growing space for both levels together. On the top level I could grow some plants which don't need so much vertical space (like lettuce) and on the lower have more space. I could get some more growing space by using shallower growing beds for the upper level (about 10-15cm (4-6") more).

So to the questions:
1) Does it make any sense to try and cram fish tank+2 levels of grow beds vertically in 2,5m (98")? How would you do it differently?
2) What could you grow in a grow bed which was only 15-20cm (6-8") deep? I know the optimal is 30cm (12"). Which of these plants would be ones which don't grow up so much?
3) Would it make more sense to try and replace 2 growing levels with only single level of growing beds and add some growing towers?
4) How much light is recommended usually for growing things like leafy greens?

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it all sounds do-able, but I would consider grow-tubes... NFT... Media less growing..

Assuming that you have a typical filtration, (including bio) then you can just run the returning water through the tubes across the tank..

The plants that I would look for , would be those that you could graze daily..

As for the light-intensity, I would be checking with the local HydroPonics shop as to what intensity they recommend..

There are some nice looking GROW-Chips from China, putting out a ghastly purple/pink light.. Not sure how long you could put up with that..
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Orthas,

There are quite a few neat "wall-based" aquaponics system ideas out there:

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Don't forget that some plants you could just drape over the edge and let dangle.

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Sam

One thing to keep in mind is that AP systems don't smell real great. I personally wouldn't have one in my bedroom.

Charlie, good point, one I hadn't considered all. How would you describe the smell? Fishy? Rotting? Compost? Any way to make lessen the smell or make it better? Unfortunately I have no other choice because of my 1.5 year old son having access to all the other rooms.

Nosliwmas, those are some great links and pictures. The middle one is closest to what I'm aiming for, with just 2 growing levels. I'm still thinking of just how much vertical space is needed for the plants to grow if using traditional media filled beds (something like hydroton). Some first hand experiences would be great!

BuiDoi, thanks for the advice. I assume it'd make no difference if I pumped the water from FT to grow tubes and it'd return via grow beds? However I think 2 levels of beds would be much easier to light than towers etc, right? I'll build the lights with CREE3070's or similar which are quite nice COB leds.

Orthas,

Here are some more details and a better link to the system in the middle pic:

Malthus, a Meal a Day. Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About the Food and Love the (Population) Bomb.

This system was presented at the 10th edition of NESS – Nordic Environmental Social Sciences Conference – Stockholm 14th -16th June 2011. The design page linked to above shows using LED strip lighting.

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Sam

Its not really a smell I can explain sorry, Its freshwater fish poop. Its not pleasant.

I certainly don't mean to disagree with Charlie, but I do have some experience with an indoor system, in my dining room. 12 8-17cm cichlids in almost 100l of water, filtered through one plastic tub 15cm deep, 30x60cm or so. Timed flood and drain, with a little tiny aquarium filter that hangs on the back of the tank as well. I added the grow bed to improve water quality in what I knew to be an overstocked aquarium and it worked really well for that. It's been running for over two years now.

In response to Charlie's comment, I went upstairs and stuck my nose directly over my GB, as I was not aware of any particular smell prior to today. What I smelled was (to me, probably very subjective) almost exactly the same smell as when first saturating peat moss out of the bag when potting plants. Wet peat/soil. I do not find it unpleasant, and as I said it is in my dining/eating area.

Worth noting that I have had no issues with using a 15cm deep hydroton bed. This does buy you a little more height. I will be building a new shelf style system myself in the next couple weeks I hope. At least one media bed will be shallow. I may experiment with using a media filled sump as a grow bed. I haven't commited yet, but I'm thinking tank up high, draining to the beds. Possibly a shallow water or dwc level above the tank. I'll add photos if/when it goes ahead.

I hope this is helpful. I wonder if the smell is partially fish or food dependent? My cichlids on aquarium feed are probably a lot different in their waste profile from trout on farm feed, or from my previous brackish predator tank on primarily live food. The brackish tank would pick up a little odor of its own the day or two after introduction of feeder fish (100 3-4cm goldfish at a time, every couple weeks). I'd guess this was partly due to the waste load from the live goldfish, but mostly due to the waste load of the eels and 'sharks' that would feast for the first day or two.

Very interesting mr. Gingerbread. Do you have any pictures up of your indoor system, saw your other one already? I did some research on the smell and most people said that a healthy system had no noticeable smell whatsoever, or maybe very faint and not unpleasant.

I'll try to post some drawings and more detailed plans next week. I have now ordered the pump (Laguna 5000l/h) and some test kits, and am waiting my for a possible source for ammonia. Then I'll have everything I need to start cycling. After that it'll be time to start building the LEDs. Here is a very nice build for lights, I'll probably do something similar, just with maybe 3 LEDs per shelf (120cm/4' wide).

I haven't had an indoor system as such so I would take GBM's advice/experience over my experiences. It may come down to the amount of feed input? Both my Ap system and overwinter aquarium (in the shed) both had strong fish waste smells but I was feeding both pretty hard. It was the water itself that smelt, more so in the RFF's where waste would collect.

Charlie, I think we're actually in agreement then. The GB's themselves are not the problem, but if your fish/feed regimen is enough to load the water with waste you will have that smell. And if I know the smell you mean, it is not quite as bad, but in the same family as 'dead fish'. Definitely unpleasant. I've smelled it in ornamental freshwater aquariums when the system was overstocked/overloaded/completely off balance. The GB allows the plants to utilise all those nutes before they accumulate in my little system I think.
And it makes sense that the RFF's would concentrate the smell, and even improve exchange into the air , as they should make a decent degassing chamber.

Orthas, I'll try to post a photo a little later, but you must promise not to make fun of the cobbled together system. As I said, it combined proof of AP concept for me with the reality that the fish did not have adequate filtration and would die if I did not do something. I've since removed some fish from the system (to my trial system), and added a second tank with a bridge siphon. What do you intend to stock for fish? In a tank that small, I can not see getting an edible to plate size, but there may be opportunities to raise ornamentals for resale. Not Convict Cichlids though, I can't even give them away as feeder fish!

Since this is a trial system and I'll have to move out in 9ish months for some renovations I'll probably go lighter on fish stocking density and concentrate on plants. I'm planning on getting some goldfish, since I read they are very hard to kill

I have now acquired all of the supplies and am planning to build the system this weekend and start cycling. As said before, I have on bottom a fish tank, and then on top of it two levels of grow beds, 3 grow beds each.

Would it be better to pump the water parallel to all of the beds or put them 3 parallel and 2 in sequence? In other words, is it better to pump all water to upper level in one pipe, then split to three beds, then drain these beds to the ones directly below OR pump to each of the 6 beds separately and then each drains to fish tank? It'd be much simpler for me to only pump to top level, any disadvantages to this?

Orthas, I am configuring my next indoor system as one bed drains to another, as you describe. My current outdoor system has a similar setup, as I have some plants growing in the sump. Once the tomatoes (four big tommie plants on a 100l fish tank) took over, the plants in the sump slowed/stopped. The tommies depleted the system. In your system, this is not likely to be an issue, but you may want to plant less demanding plants in the second beds.

The system has been running now for a week. There have been some changes in design and I'll post in a few days with pictures the whole thing and what's going on. However now I have a few quick questions.

So I started the system (270 litres to 6 beds a 40 litre flooding once an hour with timer) a week ago 30th April. Initial tests were 0 for ammonia, nitrites and nitrates. I started adding pure ammonia and nitrites appeared to my surprise already on 4th May. Now on 5th May I tested also nitrates and they had appeared too! Maybe it was due to using an used aquarium as fish tank. 5th May I also planted seeds to all grow beds. Just now I came back from a trip of couple days and many of the seeds have sprouted.

What should I do to ensure the plants have enough nutritients? I don't know how fast the bacteria get rid of ammonium, probably quite nicely, but the nitrites are still up for sure. I'll know more tomorrow. I'll be stocking goldfish initially. I was planning on waiting until the system is fully cycled until getting fish. Do I need to or would be it be recommended to get fish already for the wellbeing of plants? If so, how many fish initially in this situation? Or should I use another source of nutritients for the plants until the fish arrive? Or just wait it out?