A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

Getting Started

I would like to start a small AP garden in my spare room. I'd like to use a 55 gallon fish tank because anything more would be too big for the space. What would the best fish be to use and what should my plants to fish ratio be??? Ive been doing a lot of research but I can seem to find any good plans or diagrams for a garden like this. If anyone could help me get started I would greatly appreciate it!

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Permalink Reply by TCLynx on January 18, 2012 at 9:43am

The important things to keep in mind are your fish to filtration balance and that you will need quite a lot of lighting and some air movement to keep plants healthy in an indoor environment.

For media bed aquaponics here is a blog post that might be of help to you in designing.

Basic Media bed system design

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Permalink Reply by Mike Creuzer on January 18, 2012 at 10:27am

Use whatever fresh water fish you like! Being in the house, you will be looking at it a lot more than with the bigger, greenhouse systems.

I am using fish friends give me because they have too many. This means, right now, lots of convict ciclids.

I just use a under bed storage tote and set it on top of my wooden aquarium top. I hole for the tote to drain into the aquarium. I also like putting my media in pots so you can 'arrange' your plants to look nice.

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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Kadish NYC AA Chair on January 19, 2012 at 1:16am

I have videos of how i built my 100 (26 gallon) liter set up on youtube. I made the grow bed from scratch out of wood & pondliner and the tank is an aquarium. I focused on using reliable components because being inside you never want a leak. Many of the plastic tub solutions just don't look good in a house, so you may want to put some extra time in to building it because it really becomes a piece of furniture.