Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Ive had my ibc tank and bed a couple years now, and eaten many a fine salad from it. And Ive loved every step of learning and trying and failing. Now as a matter of need, Im expanding. Right now its a half sunk ibc tank with a gb on top and another on blocks. There plumbed to a little fountain pump and split with a T to feed both. There fd beds, bdw. I put some nft tubes up, two runs of two tubes so they go and come back to drain and they have a aquarium pump (5000 lt?) to feed them. Im going to be expanding the tubing and I want dwc beds soon too. I like the idea of long dwc pools with a run of tubes in the air above to maximize plant space. Ive done it with good results other than needing a filter before the tubes. Ive made a biofilter with bottle caps recently and I need to try it. First my new crops need to get big enough to start the nft tubes again. Ive always rented before but now I have a little piece of land in Costa Rica at about 1300 meters. If my plan works out my gh will be 5x30 meters more or less. Now its 5x6 or so. I use tilapia, minnows and little local catfish, a wild water turtle, a clam, snails, plecos, and a native shad type local river and pond fish. Also one guapote, a local ciclid and an african I bought because hes so flashy. I think he likes the guapote but it doesnt seem possible since ones from here and one from africa. Now I could use say ten tilapia to ramp up production. But I want to put in a long narrow pond so I can seriously grow food from in and out of the water. So Im going to try posting pics from my phone and show y'all where I am so far. Id love any advice or help. Im a super easy going ex pat gringo, hoping to build a future for my son. I need all the helo I can get and love to help others when I can. So thanks in advance for your time and advice.
Ps it said my image is too big 1300 pixels. So I need to learn how to resize. I will get on it and come back with pics. Id like this to be my long term thread about the trials, tribulations, the good, bad, and ugly. Hopefully I'll make a bunch of friends from all over so we can learn more. About AP, about plants, and amistad.

Hey Eric, we would love to see the pics when you have time.

You have a bit of bio-diversity in the pool with clams, snails, fish, turtle and tilapia etc. We usually stock one specie to prevent cross contamination so that they are disease free.

May be you should just consentrate on the tilapia for the moment.

Also, you may need to build a radial filter later on to remove fish poo and uneaten feed from the system just before feeding the water to DWC.

good luck

Thanks for the ideas! I have a bucket full of bottle caps to use as a biofilter. Do you think I still need the swirl filter? And how big do they need to be? I have one, two, and three gallon buckets I get cheap at the bakery that were full of strawberry filling or whatever. I made a little swirl filter to add on with the bio filter. There both 3 gallons I think. But I need them before the nft tubes and when I get my dwc going Im sure I will need something to filter before the bed, as you said. My nft tubes start about 6' of the ground and so I have to invent a way to hang or hold up the filter(s) just before the tubes. I think I should pump up to the filter and the tubes should start just under the filter to be gravity fed. Does that sound right?
Im hoping to have the backhoe come and flatten out where my gh will grow and have the guy dig me a pond too. Any ideas on how big to make it? My gh will be about 25 or 30 meters by five. I want to pack in as much production as possible, with dwc on the ground in 2/3 of the floorspace, and gbs for the rest of the usable floorspace, with a couple runs of nft in the air to use the airspace. Going up is free! Growing out isnt an option. Y'all know way more about how many fish to stock in a given amount of water, and I need some guidance on how big to make the ft(pond in the ground with liner). For example, with 30 meters of length, I figure maybe five or six meters long, one wide and one deep. But that could be wrong, maybe too small? I doubt its too big. Then say 100 or more tilapia. I dont really care much for tilapia but after they reproduce, the big ones need culling so Ill have a fish fry. I plan on just tilapia and maybe local catfish. My ibc as noted, has a lot of stuff living in it. My idea was that several types of poo would provide more vitamins. But I dont see much differance. Id like to habe river shrimp or crayfish too, in the ibc. I need most of the plants running off the pond to the dwc, gbs and nfc and the ibc can then habe shrimp or whatever and a couple gbs to frow my bonsais and maybe spices.
Thanks again for ideas and advice! I know formulas exist for ft/stocking ratio. But math is my worst subject. And Im not sure how big to make my pond, with the space available and wanting to max out on plants or close to it. So if anyone has advice on the pond size the rest should be easy to figure out, the stocking and bed sizes.
I havnt seen pond liners here. But I can get a thick, high quality biodigestor plastic about twice as thick as gh roof type plastic. I plan on using two or three layers, and it should last a very long time. My yard is clay that holds its shape very well so I dont think cement is important. Or do I have a bad plan? Thanks again, sorry for so many questions.

You are certainly asking the right questions. I'm a novice so I'll let the experts chime in.

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Depending on the size of the biofilter, you may not need a second swirl filter. But biofilter will clog up quickly as the tilapia is one of the best poo producer (I have no experience but her in Oz but read in this forum). A swirl filter will take out the solids and you still need to empty the stinking sludge at the bottom of the swirl filter regularly; it is the best fertilizer for fruit trees.


Yes, use as much gravity as you can to cut the electricity costs.



Fish capacity depends on the grow beds, in other words, how much of the ammonia the system converts, Any filter, plant, bacteria in the wet gravel or grow media affects this. Have a look at Dr. Lennard's calculator (http://aquaponic.com.au/calculators.htm), it is an easy Excel sheet where you punch some numbers and will tell you how much fish, feed etc you need.



You are planning a large FT and when it comes to maintenance of the liner, it will be a pain in the bum in couple of years. Do you have the possibility of using either concrete or custom mold fiberglass? Have a look at the costs and see which one would be better. Think that if you need to replace one layer of pond liner in 2 years, how much it is going to cost including the initial costs. A fiberglass or concrete tank would last a lot longer I presume. Think long term savings here. Concrete though needs time to mature and release the carbonates in time. Search the forum and you will see. pH adjustment becomes a real problem there.

Also creatures with claws may pierce the liner in time if they get in the FT

I think, it would be better to draw a plan, visualise things, pipe and fittings requirements, future advancements, easy access etc because this is not furniture that you can move around. They will be pretty much fixed features of your garden.