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Digester? Upgrading pitfalls?

I set up a small 40 gallon flood system this past summer and grew tomatoes, cucumbers, and cabbage but I'm looking to upgrade to a flow system and potentially a 500 gallon setup but I'm still working through some questions from the last system.

Has anyone set up a digester to help speed up the breakdown of waste? My system worked fine but after reading some people's thoughts on having fish waste in the same area as my plants I set up a system to catch and keep the solid system from reaching my grow beds. But the waste kept building up to the point that it clogged the system completely once over the summer. Not a big deal with such a small system but upgrading to a larger system and looking at increasing the amount of fish has me wondering if there is a better system to handle this.

Second question, I know there is a delicate balance between the number of fish and the number of plants and if it comes to it I'll just experiment but I was wondering if anyone had been able to come up with rough numbers on the ratio between the two.

Last question(for now), having not set up a flow based system before I am curious if people have thoughts or pitfalls that they have experienced so that I can avoid this if possible.

Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Sue McL on October 19, 2012 at 10:03am

As a digester add red wrigglers / composting worms to your beds and/or catch the excess solids in a sock on the end of your outflow from FT. I've seen some people use "Drain filter sleeve" from Home Depot or Lowes -- zip tie or rubber band over end and it will catch lots of waste. Then feed waste to worms in their bin...

From my notes (that I've gleaned from here and there):

For each pound of fish you want to raise, plan on one to two square feet of grow bed (12” deep). Aim for 1 1/2 square feet per pound of fish...

And for each pound of fish you want, plan on 5 to 10 gallons of water for their tank. More water equates to happier / bigger / faster growing fish.

I'm sure someone with more experience will be along shortly. I'm still learning this stuff, too.