A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

Getting started

Hi i am new and looking for the best system to start with?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Leo White Bear on December 12, 2013 at 11:34am

Bobby-

Welcome to the group. That's an open question, there are a few easy system designs that we build. There is the media-based units, Nutrient film Tecneque (NFT), DWC Deep water culture also known as the raft system. Each one has its merits and drawbacks. The question you need to ask yourself may be why do I want to do aquaponics and what space is available, what price am I willing to lay out, buying new vs. scrounge tecnology. The smallest system I have is a 55-gallon aquarium and 2, 35-gallon totes for grow beds. I prefer the media design or a hybrid NFT/media. Look around in the past posts, ask lots of questions and start designing you aquaponics area.

Permalink Reply by Bobby wolf gather on December 12, 2013 at 8:11pm

Thank you very much! I have a 50 gal aquarium so i need is grow beds and media? So how do catfish do in that kind of system?

Permalink Reply by Leo White Bear on December 13, 2013 at 4:34am

Bobby-

I have bull heads and catfish amonst other fish in my dining room and they are doing great. The cats (four legged) do like to watch them through the glass. This doesn't seem to bother the fish unless the felines make too sudden a move. I had them indoors now for 1-1/2 months and they are doing great. My system consists of a 55-gallon aquarium and two 30-gallon totes from wally world. By pumping the water to a splitter, I can regulate the flow with two brass gate valves. I use purple granet for my medium as it is pH nuetral. I also need to plant more plants as my nitrates are a bit high, or remove a few fish, I'm thinking of anouther system utilizing a 25-gallon aquarium I have just sitting around.

Permalink Reply by Bobby wolf gather on December 13, 2013 at 5:33am

Cool i thank you so much!!

Permalink Reply by TCLynx on December 16, 2013 at 11:20am

If you are looking to grow channel catfish, I would recommend the next, outdoor system be bigger. I personally don't like to put channel catfish into anything smaller than 300 gallons for grow out (of course I'm in Florida where it is warm and they grow really fast, I can get fingerlings up to between 2-6 lb in 12 months.)

To start with I highly recommend media bed systems. If you can sort out a sump tank that is big enough, I highly recommend having twice the volume of media bed as you have fish tank and do a CHIFT PIST or CHOP type system of some sort. Make sure you have lots of really good grow lighting to grow your plants, most people trying to start out growing indoors terribly under estimate how much lighting it really takes to replace sunlight for growing plants. Add an oscillating fan to the room to provide some simulated breeze to help grow stronger plants that are less likely to flop over when they get too leggy reaching for the light as well as to help keep fungus/humidity issues at bay.

Permalink Reply by Bobby wolf gather on December 16, 2013 at 12:52pm

Thanks for all the helpfull info. I live in ok so it will be spring befor i can start outside but i will! So i will do some goldfish inside till then just to get started!!

Permalink Reply by Bobby wolf gather on December 19, 2013 at 5:12pm

Can you tell me using an ibc tote how deep to make my grow bed?

Permalink Reply by Leo White Bear on December 19, 2013 at 5:46pm

The consensis on grow bed depth is 12-inches. Man, that's a lot of media. In my systems, the grow beds are cut from the top of the IBC incorporating the first horizontal cage brace. Cut the verticle braces down to the next horizontal brace. Now this will give you approximatly 8-12" depth of grow bed depending on the make of your IBC tote. No they are not all the same. Click on the bear on the left and check out my photos. This is my system in the heated barn. In some of the photos you will see my friend June Washington, he helped me with a lot of moral support, good guy.

Permalink Reply by TCLynx on December 22, 2013 at 8:25am

12" deep grow beds allow for easy calculations since with a 12" deep grow bed, each square foot of grow bed is also a cubic foot of media bed filtration and reasonably able to support up to a pound of fish. 12" deep beds also make it easy to have the dry zone on top and the always wet zone in the bottom and a good depth of active filtration in the middle in flood and drain beds. However, there is ample evidence to show that beds of different depths also work. I've run many grow beds that were 24 inches deep (and if I'm cutting IBC's for grow beds, I usually cut them in half and use both halves as grow beds and then just cut a top opening in another IBC for a fish tank unless I can get my hands on a nice depth round fish tank.)

I also know many people who use mortar tubs (only about 7 inches deep) as grow beds. It can all work.

The trick is to not overstock your system for the amount of filtration you have. If you are making a single IBC system with just the top as the grow bed then keep in mind that IBC top of cut at 12 inches deep will only support up to between 12-16 fish if you grow them to 1 lb each. That is not a lot of grow bed. If you make the grow bed shallower, you need to reduce the amount of fish you grow accordingly or add some additional means of filtration. Remember you can really grow a HUGE amount of plants with a rather small amount of fish.