A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

Greetings from Winston Salem NC

Hello all, I have been a life long fish guy & own a small home based Hydroponic company. I am leaping into the combined hobby of Aquaponic's. I have been wanting to start a system for a while but have never taken the time to set anything up. I am in the beginning stages of preping the IBC tote & grow bed. Fortunately I have all the plumbing bulkheads, fittings & valves & tubing as they are used in hydro set up's I build.

I am sure I will have some questions along the way but I will read through the forums before posting any on here.

My initial set up will be 275 gallon tote, 12" deep grow bed & 55 gallon swirl filter.

Looking forward to learning & sharing where I can with others.

Bill

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Permalink Reply by George on April 7, 2015 at 5:44am

You can use the image button to insert a photo into the text box. I'm not knocking your swirl filter but be aware that you may not need it since your grow bed will be a filter. Swirl filters are generally used in conjunction with deep water culture (DWC) and nutrient film technique (NFT), terms you are probably already familiar with from hydro. I expect that you will do very well with aquaponics.

If you go by the rules of thumb and use a 1 to 1 ratio of water to media, then you need 275 gallons of media in your grow bed. I'm not saying this is necessary, but there are reasons for that recommendation. Keep in mind that the more fish you have, the more filtering you need. With that in mind, if you have much less than a 1 to 1 ratio with rather heavy stocking, then the swirl filter will likely be needed. However, there is a school of thought that nutrients should not be unnecessarily removed from a system, as you would be doing with a swirl filter.