What is Aquaponics?
How to put this simply... if you look at the picture on the left you will see it put into the simplest terms possible. You have fish who muck up the water with their poo and the ammonia excreted from their gills. This is then pumped into the "grow beds" where the plants live. The plants who need the nitrates found in the fish poo water as their nutrients to grow take in the "bad muck" and via their root systems clean the dirty water into clean oxygen rich water that then goes back into the fish tank. An analogy is a pond. You have fish who via their muck feed all the plant life on the shore edge as well as the aquatic underwater plants. This makes an ecosystem that works in a cyclonic cycle like the world turning...a circle of life. Aquaponics is amazing. And the best thing is no harsh chemicals like is used in hydroponics!
So you get healthy natural vegetables and fruit with nothing more than feeding a few fish everyday. And depending on the type of fish you grow, they can be eaten too! Some favorite varieties used are Talapia, Trout and even Catfish! You can have a small system with just a few feet of grow space to a large commercial system that can feed thousands in fish and produce!
So you get healthy natural vegetables and fruit with nothing more than feeding a few fish everyday. And depending on the type of fish you grow, they can be eaten too! Some favorite varieties used are Talapia, Trout and even Catfish! You can have a small system with just a few feet of grow space to a large commercial system that can feed thousands in fish and produce!
What we have here
Our Trial system started January 2012
When I first heard about Aquaponics "AP" I had been researching growing alternatives and was seriously considering starting a Hydroponics system. The hold up of starting one was the cost factor of the chemicals used to keep the plants living in nutrient rich water all the time. Also the chemicals/fertilizers used are petroleum based products and I do not feel comfortable eating any more petroleum then we need to. It really is poison to us. I spent hours on you tube watching one video after another on hydroponics when I stumbled across one for Aquaponics. It was one for beginners and broke down what it was and how to make a home system for next to nothing. I was intrigued!
I was so excited I had to show Jonathan...this might be it I said. How to grow a garden on our land of sand without having to take any more woods away, without having to worry about weather, water, length of growing season! Holy Cow why aren't more people doing this??? So we researched it some more and finally decided to build a system right in the living room. This was two fold, it would allow us to grow food for our family year round but also add extra moisture to the air during the dry winter months. Our house was literally shocking us all the time!
I was so excited I had to show Jonathan...this might be it I said. How to grow a garden on our land of sand without having to take any more woods away, without having to worry about weather, water, length of growing season! Holy Cow why aren't more people doing this??? So we researched it some more and finally decided to build a system right in the living room. This was two fold, it would allow us to grow food for our family year round but also add extra moisture to the air during the dry winter months. Our house was literally shocking us all the time!
We build our system...
Ok so from the pictures it looks like Jonathan is doing all the work again, but really I did some too! We started by finding a used 29 gallon fish tank on the online classifieds which came with the light, decorations, filters, pumps, nets, rocks, and stand. All for under $50! What a bargain. We then tried to come up with a way to keep the system in as small of space as possible but getting as much growing bed as we could. Our plan was combining two forms of AP - NFS - (nutrient flow system) and Ebb & Flow system.
I will start with the NFS system first. In the first three pictures you will see Jonathan gluing and mounting the PVC drain pipe we used for the NFS system. The supplies needed were one 10 foot long 4" PVC pipe which we cut in half, two end caps and two end caps with screw on lids. We also had some J hook supports left over from when we did our septic line which worked out fantastic on the wood supports. We also needed some 1 1/2" pvc piping and elbows to connect the two pipes together and to drain the base pipe into the larger grow bed. Literally using a 70 gallon an hour submersible water pump in the fish tank the water will flow up a tube that will connect to the top PVC pipe where we have drilled 3" diameter holes. In the holes we have Nettie baskets filled with a growing medium called Hydroton (basically little clay balls that are made in Germany). As the plants grow in these pots, their roots will reach down into the nutrient rich water from the fish tank and feed the plants. The pipes are mounted in our bay window which is south facing so gets bright sunshine for the majority of the day. The water gravity feeds down so no other power is needed after the initial pump is used to feed the water into the top pipe. I should mention that you will see a green soda bottle in the pictures. This is our swill filter. What this does is cleans the larger particles out of the water before it reaches the main system, allowing us to clean this bottle periodically so that our main system does not get bogged down from debris from the fish tank.
The pipes then enter our second system which is an Ebb and Flow system. The water gravity feeds from the NFS system into the large black water trough we bought at Tractor Supply as this is the perfect size to grow in. The measurements are roughly 2 feet wide, by 1 foot tall by 4 feet long. This bed fills up with water until it reaches the top of the bell siphon we have built in the center of the bed approx 8 inches or so. This was also made out of PVC pipe and it is a drain that runs with no power, it just uses the water draining as a suction that starts a siphon action that drains all the clean oxygen rich water back into the fish tank. This siphon was actually the hardest thing out of the whole system to make. The basics are easy it is getting the siphon to be just the right height with just the right suction and with just the right breaking tube length. So a lot of time consuming fiddling around to get it to work. Once we did, we were able to fill the grow bed with hydroton and wait for the system to cycle.
We started our system with goldfish as they are inexpensive (in case there are casualties) and because we do not plan on eating any of the fish in our trial system. Any fresh water fish will work in the system - so you could really use tropical fish as long as they do not require a lot of salt as plants do not like salt water to grow in. The rule of thumb for grow space to fish ratio is for every gallon of water is a square foot of garden. We actually have a bit too much grow bed for our tank but now that everything has cycled (all the nutrient levels have developed and stabilized) our plants are coming along.
I should mention that there are things that have to be done to make sure the system is running correctly. We have to test the water every few days to check on PH, Ammonia, nitrites and nitrate levels in the water. This is accomplished by using a fresh water test kit and takes under 10 minutes to do. We also have to feed the fish once a day - not much just enough to keep them happy without throwing my water test off with spiking ammonia!
I do think I added the fish into our system a bit too soon, as my water test levels were looking great so we added fish and then the nitrites spiked (which is normal in a developing system - it is starting the good bacteria) and my test was purple! The normal level should be a light blue or 0 ppm (parts per million) it was 5 ppm. It took 10 days with numerous water changes and patience before the water settled down and the system normalized. We did lose some fish in the process but we started off with more than we needed so it was ok in the end. So our system after 3 months of operation is finally producing and we have lettuce, thyme, basil, tomatoes, and beans growing in the house! We haven't had too much to harvest yet except basil, but I would imagine that within the next month we will have an abundance of vegetables that we started with no more than some water, some fish and some good old fashion yankee ingenuity!
I will start with the NFS system first. In the first three pictures you will see Jonathan gluing and mounting the PVC drain pipe we used for the NFS system. The supplies needed were one 10 foot long 4" PVC pipe which we cut in half, two end caps and two end caps with screw on lids. We also had some J hook supports left over from when we did our septic line which worked out fantastic on the wood supports. We also needed some 1 1/2" pvc piping and elbows to connect the two pipes together and to drain the base pipe into the larger grow bed. Literally using a 70 gallon an hour submersible water pump in the fish tank the water will flow up a tube that will connect to the top PVC pipe where we have drilled 3" diameter holes. In the holes we have Nettie baskets filled with a growing medium called Hydroton (basically little clay balls that are made in Germany). As the plants grow in these pots, their roots will reach down into the nutrient rich water from the fish tank and feed the plants. The pipes are mounted in our bay window which is south facing so gets bright sunshine for the majority of the day. The water gravity feeds down so no other power is needed after the initial pump is used to feed the water into the top pipe. I should mention that you will see a green soda bottle in the pictures. This is our swill filter. What this does is cleans the larger particles out of the water before it reaches the main system, allowing us to clean this bottle periodically so that our main system does not get bogged down from debris from the fish tank.
The pipes then enter our second system which is an Ebb and Flow system. The water gravity feeds from the NFS system into the large black water trough we bought at Tractor Supply as this is the perfect size to grow in. The measurements are roughly 2 feet wide, by 1 foot tall by 4 feet long. This bed fills up with water until it reaches the top of the bell siphon we have built in the center of the bed approx 8 inches or so. This was also made out of PVC pipe and it is a drain that runs with no power, it just uses the water draining as a suction that starts a siphon action that drains all the clean oxygen rich water back into the fish tank. This siphon was actually the hardest thing out of the whole system to make. The basics are easy it is getting the siphon to be just the right height with just the right suction and with just the right breaking tube length. So a lot of time consuming fiddling around to get it to work. Once we did, we were able to fill the grow bed with hydroton and wait for the system to cycle.
We started our system with goldfish as they are inexpensive (in case there are casualties) and because we do not plan on eating any of the fish in our trial system. Any fresh water fish will work in the system - so you could really use tropical fish as long as they do not require a lot of salt as plants do not like salt water to grow in. The rule of thumb for grow space to fish ratio is for every gallon of water is a square foot of garden. We actually have a bit too much grow bed for our tank but now that everything has cycled (all the nutrient levels have developed and stabilized) our plants are coming along.
I should mention that there are things that have to be done to make sure the system is running correctly. We have to test the water every few days to check on PH, Ammonia, nitrites and nitrate levels in the water. This is accomplished by using a fresh water test kit and takes under 10 minutes to do. We also have to feed the fish once a day - not much just enough to keep them happy without throwing my water test off with spiking ammonia!
I do think I added the fish into our system a bit too soon, as my water test levels were looking great so we added fish and then the nitrites spiked (which is normal in a developing system - it is starting the good bacteria) and my test was purple! The normal level should be a light blue or 0 ppm (parts per million) it was 5 ppm. It took 10 days with numerous water changes and patience before the water settled down and the system normalized. We did lose some fish in the process but we started off with more than we needed so it was ok in the end. So our system after 3 months of operation is finally producing and we have lettuce, thyme, basil, tomatoes, and beans growing in the house! We haven't had too much to harvest yet except basil, but I would imagine that within the next month we will have an abundance of vegetables that we started with no more than some water, some fish and some good old fashion yankee ingenuity!
What's next?
IBC container for future AP system
With the success of our indoor system, Jonathan and I are planning on expanding our system to include the use of some IBC containers in an outdoor or greenhouse setting. Keep checking back as we finalize our plans and post them here with some pictures as we master the fascinating world of Aquaponics!