Comment

Comment by Tom OBrien on September 10, 2013 at 10:00pm

Hi Brigitte, I've got a fairly small system in the basement and it has been an interesting experiment. I started with decorative goldfish brought inside from our little garden pond and am now growing yellow perch. A 200 gallon tank with tilapia sounds like a real good place to start.

Comment by Bob Campbell on September 10, 2013 at 11:01am

The three members you will enjoy following are

Vlad Jovanovic

Rob Torcellini

Nate Storey

They are all in similar climates and are experts

Comment by Brigitte Gigi Klotzek-Obringer on September 10, 2013 at 8:44am

Hello, my name is Brigitte and I am in Ohio. I have recently become obsessed with the idea of setting up an aquaponics system so I am a complete newbie. We are in zone 5a-6a depending on which map you use so I was thinking about starting a smaller system indoors. Which type of aquaponics do you think would work best indoors? I was thinking around 200 gallons with tilapia? I love the idea of trout but there seems to be a larger learning curve? Would the basement or garage work better? Would a greenhouse work for aquaponics in Ohio in the winter? Thanks in advance!

Comment by Jim Fisk on September 4, 2013 at 11:29am

Hey Craig, not sure "no outside walls" constitutes "indoor AP". Is it enclosed or open to temperature extremes? Anyway, start by learning the basics and then start drawing a system up based around your particular layout either on paper or computer and then we can chime in. The best systems I have seen all have a below grade "clean water" sump after the GBs and before the FTs so you are pumping clear water and all solids flow depend upon gravity. That would be a good starting point.

Comment by Craig Shevlin on September 4, 2013 at 8:54am

Just to give everyone a eads up on what I am going to do:

I am in Moneta, VA between Lynchburg and Roanoke at Smith Mountain Lake.  I built my house with an interior Arboretum  (no outside walls, only a roof), for the sole purpose of having a room to grow my citrus trees.  But now I am interested in doing Aquaponics.  Has anyone built an indoor Aquaponics room indoors? I have a 14'l X 8'w X 22'H indoor arboretum with 4 skylights above.  About to add 5 additional 14" round sun-tubes to the ceiling from a south facing roof. I will have 8 horizontal 4inch pipes running the length of the room.  Below this room I plan on putting in an aquarium with freshwater red claw crayfish and blue gill (food for the crayfish and me).  All comments and suggestions welcomed.  CraigSS@live.com

Comment by Harold Sukhbir on September 3, 2013 at 2:19pm

Whether solids removal is incorporated in the original AP design intentionally or becomes necessary to address due to the AP design after the fact. Its is a good idea to maximize the mineral use by utilizing the removed minerals in the form of fish waste to propagate additional plant growth eg. adding the extra waste to soil beds etc. as TC suggest. This is why it is important to know beforehand the system you design and all the consequences involved. If you live in an apartment setting or if you live in a home with land space will determine greatly how you may design an AP which can maximize its mineral output.

Comment by TCLynx on September 3, 2013 at 8:39am

Craig,

If you have plenty of gravel grow beds, then you may not need any solids removal at all.  Unfortunately, systems often don't have that much gravel grow bed and sending ll the solids from a heavily loaded system to a small amount of gravel bed will clog up the gravel beds.

So people often employ methods of solids removal.  Removing those solids DOES remove nutrients from the system.  If it is a system with a huge amount of fish and not that many plants, then removing some nutrients is usually not a problem.  Or there are methods to send those solids to a sludge pond and aerate it till stabilized and then siphon off the clear nutrient rich water back into the system to allow for recovery of some of the otherwise lost nutrients but the removed de-watered solids will still contain a good amount of nutrients and can replace other fertilizers in soil growing.

BUT Craig was asking about running NFT pipes I believe.  Those don't provide much if any filtration and if you send straight fish poopy water to those pipes the solids will gunk up the plant roots and it will be nasty ad not very functional after a time.  Before sending water to NFT in an aquaponic system, you need solids and bio-filtration so that the animal waste will have been converted into plant usable nutrients AND the solids are kept from gunking up the plant roots and suffocating them.  I've only ever used NFT pipes as an add on to a system that was primarily composed of media beds where I collected some of the filtered water after the media beds and pumped it to the NFT pipes.  In most media bed aquaponics systems where there is ample media beds to handle the solids, one allows the solids to go to the media beds and break down/mineralize right there in the system providing additional nutrients to the system.

Comment by Craig Shevlin on September 3, 2013 at 4:46am

So what I am getting out of this is even though a system is enclosed there needs to be a filtration system to remove solids produced by the fish but not removing any of the nitrates/ammonia that still needs to be circulated in the system.

Comment by Jim Fisk on September 2, 2013 at 3:09pm

One should add that it takes 6 mos. to a year of cycling before the system is really established so don't loose patience. It takes time for the good bacteria to become colonized in every corner of the system. By 7 or 8 mos our 2000+ gal system seemed bullet proof compared to the first 6 mos. of mysterious fish deaths and insect invasions. Our fish are doing great and the Swiss Chard is over a year old and still producing many great meals. We are very excited going into our second Winter actually knowing what to expect and having great success with our trout as well. Fall is like Spring in AP as we are just now planning the fish and plants that will take us thru the Winter.

Comment by TCLynx on September 2, 2013 at 1:35pm

Right Leo!  Like in Organic gardening the whole point is to feed the soil life so that the soil life takes care of the rest!  Same thing with aquaponics, make sure there is a robust, healthy bacteria colony and they do most of the work of making sure everyone else is healthy.

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