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sorry some things i have trouble getting my head around so here it is : how do you determine the grow bed size to the water/fish ratio in different systems,such as this,i see 8 inch pvc pipe connect by 90s to create a  long run of plants ,spaced about every foot with net pot/ media /plant, ,heres the question, how do you figure how many plants in that system to have a 1.1 ratio with your water supply? sorry i hope you can follow my thinking

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Plants in holes in pipe do not count as media beds and are not really applicable to the raitos.

The ratios are mostly about making sure you have enough filtration for your fish water and amount of fish.  Since the pipes with plants in them don't really provide much filtration and you need filtration before you send your fish water to such pipes the ratios are not of much use to plants in pipes.

The example of a 1:1 grow bed to fish tank ration would be for figuring how much media filled grow bed to set up so for say a 300 gallon fish tank you might want to set up 3 100 gallon grow beds to get the 1:1 ratio and if you have some means of dealing with the water level fluctuations you could have 6, 100 gallon grow beds for a 2:1 grow bed to fish tank ratio.

as far as figuring out how many plants you can have, well that will greatly depend on the amount the fish are eating.  If you have nitrates and the plants look good then you have enough fish to support your plants.  If you have no nitrates and the plants are showing nitrate deficiency then you might need more fish or less plants.  If your nitrates are really high, then you need more plants.  This will fluctuate depending on temperature especially in outdoor non tropical systems.  When the fish are not eating well, the plants will slow down.

i see i understand thanks for that info its the amount of nitrates in the water, the bio filter would not remove any nitrate that so it wouldn't matter to these plants ,as long as nitrates are high ? And water is good for fish

Right the bio filter just converts ammonia into nitrate.  A media bed happens to be the bio-filter combined with the plant growing space as well as a solids filter and home for worms so very convenient for home garden type aquaponic systems.

When you start doing for Raft or NFT auqpaonics the bio-filter needs to be separate for all but extreme low density systems so the figuring becomes a bit more complex since how many plants you need will be affected by the method of filtration and if you are removing solids or not.

Here is a design blog I wrote ages ago about media bed auqpaonics.

http://www.aquaponiclynx.com/media-bed-aquaponic-design

thank you

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