(Part 2) Best products from r/aquaponics

You're probably not going to find real quantifiable data like that because there are so many factors including growth media and I'm not sure it scales up and down linearly.

I have:

• a 10 gallon tank; with two goldfish; a water jet; airstones; automated feeders; and an eheim filter- supporting two house plants
  Imgur (left side)
  
  
• another 4l0L (10 gallon) with two or three yoyo loaches (rescued); a panda catfish; and an algae eater- that supports a large windowsill planter of growth media holding mint/shisou/thai basil and has a eheim filter for extra biomass and 2 water jets; airstones in the tank and biomass area; and an automated feeder
  Imgur (middle)
  
  
• Finally an outside setup with 150 gallon tub with 5 goldfish (rescued) that runs through PVC pipe with about 10 net baskets with heads of lettuce and an automated koi-pond outdoor feeder.
  imgur
  
  These are all stable systems that have lasted about two years a piece
  
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  Issues of any cruelty aside- this is fine as a starter/intro and you'll find that you'll likely want to upgrade as things work out- mostly because small systems are a lot harder to take care of.
  
  The thing with goldfish is that they put out a lot of ammonia (so in a small tank ammonia poisoning might be a thing) and the size of the container tends to cap their growth. But I wouldn't sweat the fish thing too much because a few of them might die due to the tank being new (although goldfish are extremely hearty) sketchy source: http://www.firsttankguide.net/newtanksyndrome.php
  
  It's hard to tell you straight away about how many fish etc because this aquarium system looks fresh and not yet cycled- ie. your aquarium probably doesn't have it's fill of microscopic plant life living in it and in the growth bed material you are using. Be aware you'll likely need to treat the new water you add into the tank. (chlorine remover etc) and that adding new water will have a relatively large effect on your tank due to it being compact. sketchy source: http://nippyfish.net/2009/05/27/cycling-a-small-aquarium/
  
  This means that you'll need to watch the amount of food you feed your fish carefully.
  
  100 grams of fish food will generally support about one square meter of plant life.
  sketchy source: http://www.doityourself.com/stry/aquaponics-knowing-the-fish-to-plant-ratio
  
  The great thing about what you are doing (cycling, establishing your grow bed as a bio filter) is that if you start a new tank, you'll be able to use this water and material to start out a larger tank faster (largely what you did by getting some of their gravel).
  
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  Nice tips/ways to scale up or automate things to make your life easier:
  
  
• Petco often has dollar-per-gallon sales and there's usually tons of tanks on craigslist etc if/when you decide to scale up.
  
  
• Automatic feeders make the process less hands on:
  ie. http://www.amazon.com/Automatic-Fish-Feeder-AquaChef-Batteries/dp/B004249KFG
  
  
• A water pump to run the fish water through the growth media might do your tank very well and are quite cheap, this one is 8usd: http://www.amazon.com/Patuoxun-Submersible-Aquarium-Fountain-Hydroponic/dp/B00EU74MJY/
  
  
• Additional biomass:
  
  
• This filter (15usd) might add a little additional biomass, which makes your aquarium a little larger and helps breakdown the ammonia etc: http://www.amazon.com/TM1250-Aquarium-Internal-Power-Filter/dp/B00176GKM8/
  
  or
  
  
• (25usd) http://www.amazon.com/Aquarium-Rapids-Canister-hang---tank/dp/B000YJ0M1E/
  
  
• Again waterflow (helps with algae) then something like this is about 9 usd: http://www.amazon.com/Submersible-Circulation-Maker-Water-Aquarium/dp/B009YEEW2K/
  
  Note: most of these links are sketchy- just conveying ideas in an easy to read/digestible format.
  
  

You'd be surprised a) how easy it is to use Arduino, and b) how helpful the online community is. The nice thing about Arduino is that the complexity remains the same, regardless of how many sensors you add, provided you have enough expansion breakout board.

For a first step, I would buy a starter kit and a cheap soldering iron and a half-decent multimeter and just start making little projects, like light sensors and temperature sensors and making those projects both wireless and online.

After that, it's just a matter of interfacing the larger, higher-voltage components (like pumps and valves) with the lower-voltage Arduino. This is easily accomplished with a relay, which is also useful for electrical isolation between the two subsystems.

Start small. I would recommend making an Arduino into a timer, and then using the timer to control a pump. Then add an online API that allows you to adjust the on/off time of the pump. Then add water level sensors, then temperature sensors, etc.

Also, make sure you prototype everything on a small scale first, like the guy in the video was doing on his desk. It will save you a lot of money if you mess anything up.

Once you develop the skills necessary to build your smart-system, I cannot stress how important a good, detailed electrical diagram is. It doesn't matter if it's professional-quality, or done with pencil and a ruler. It will save you so much time.

>Alternative Solids Removal for Warm Water Recirculating Raft Aquaponic Systems.pdf

TLDR: They use way too many words comparing clarifiers and swirl separators. They find no difference.

>Hydroponics A Practical Guide for the Soilless Grower 2e 2005.pdf
>Fish Disease Diagnosis And Treatment - 2nd Ed. Edward Noga

That's $200 in paper right there. Thank you!

>anaerobic digesters!!

Also called, "Methane fermentation process as anaerobic digestion of biomass." I hope you like organic chemistry.

>How to Make a Bell Siphon

Very nice. Thorough testing of a variety of set sizes of bell siphon along with building instructions. Very simple and very inexpensive.

>Ch 14 Aquaponics

A chapter from this book, written by Dr. Rakocy. Looks like an exact copy of Pub 454. Ton of easy to read info along with very nice rules of thumb.

>why africa can feed itself

I had no idea agriculture was experiencing such a boom in Africa.

>Biofloc Technology (BFT)

Not very applicable to AP. Focuses on non-recirculating fish ponds where microorganisms create an extra protein source for the fish as well as nitrogen removal.

>Aquaponics-Research-at-RMIT

Written by Wilson Lennard. He's a smart guy. This was written back in 2004 but is a good reference regarding media-based systems.

>Engineering Design Process 2nd ed (intro txt) - Y. Haik, T. Shahin (Cengage, 2011) BBS

That would be this textbook. A $100 value!

>evoluton-of-Aquaponics

A lame article written in 2002 from the Aquaponics Journal.

>Recirculating Aquaculture Tank Production

Otherwise known as SRAC Pub 454. If you download just one thing in the dropbox, get this one.

>CSU arming in aquaponics

A masters business project from Cal State in 2013. Some good industry analysis if you want to start a fish farm.

>On-Farm Food Safety Aquaponics

An overview from Hawaii of good agricultural practices.

>Aquaponics Ebb and Flow Mechanisms

85 pages of everything you need to know, even comparisons, of every reliable mechanism of flood/drain media beds.

Don't stock it with comet goldfish. Small minnows or tetras in a large school are great and won't outgrow it. I highly recommend not getting fish that will need a brand new tank in less than a year. You could still chose larger fish, but make sure they meet the holding capacity of your tank when full grown.

You will need grow lights. There are some cheap LED options through amazon like https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B079B86TZK/ref=oh_aui_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 You will need lights if basement growing.

Plastic totes (fairly shallow) can be purchased. Polyethylene or Polypropylene are good choices. These make decent grow beds. I recommend equal volume for the grow beds as the tank (rule of thumb by Sylvia Bernstein for media beds- you can double the growbed to tank later on if you feel comfortable). So if you have 2.5 cubic feet of water, you might need a couple of small totes that hold a similar amount. This means you have the biological media necessary to filter the water properly. A sump is probably also required with that setup because otherwise your fish tank would be empty when the media beds are filling. Tomatoes are hard to fruit inside (different light requirements, like more red, and very very high light requirement- actually thats true for most of your fruiting plants). I would stick with regular greens for now. You would need to do some more research on fertilizers and light schedules to achieve fruiting peppers and tomatoes.

OK so I just set up this small patio system, as a learning experience. So far I like how it looks and sounds! Plan is to build a larger one (maybe 100gal) if all goes well here.... assuming my patio balcony can handle 100 gallons.

I used this cheaply made Chinese fountain (it was $110 when I bought it; I wouldn't buy it now at any price but would build my own, now that I see how it works). It has a pump in the bottom that runs water through a tube to the top barrel, which overflows to the second, which overflows back to the third. Plastic lined throughout. Unknown toxicity....
https://www.amazon.com/Rustic-Three-Barrel-Outdoor-Fountain/dp/B004V99HXW

There is hydroton in the top two layers, held in by netting or black permeable 'grow bags'; the bottom layer has 3 small goldfish, a couple rocks, an aquatic plant and one nerite snail. I started with a few gallons of water from an established aquarium.

Basil and watercress are doing fine, the others I did not expect to do well frankly (fish are very small!), but tomatoes doing better than expected - flowering and setting (one!) fruit, and the cucumber made some flowers but leaves are yellowing a bit.

Lessons so far:
There is not enough depth at the top compared to the 'spouts' to keep a top layer of hydroton dry. Will have to make overflow holes from the top two lower down, if/when algae becomes an issue.

It's set to a 15-min-on-per-hour cycle using a timer. After setting it up realized the top two barrels would not actually drain, as designed!.... so drilled a small hole (siliconed in a small tube) so that each barrel empties slowly through its bottom as well; when the fountain stops it seems to stop trickling at about the 30 minute mark, and starts up again ten or 15min later.

Seems to have iron deficiency, not sure about other nutrients.... My main goal is to grow greens that you can harvest leaf by leaf, such as bok choy in the winter, rather than fruits like tomatoes here, but not sure what to grow in the heat of summer besides basil....

Have not figured out any good way to incorporate solids management in this kind of design. Should probably at least find a foam filter of some kind to put over the pump intake

I don't have pics of my IBC fish tank, but I wrapped something like this around it.

White side out to reflect most of the heat/light away, black side in so no light makes it through to any potential algae. I even built a pvc frame with a hinge at one end, then wrapped that with the white/black film and clipped it to the frame with these. It made a pretty nice lid to my fish tank IBC.

Remember, fish don't need much light. They actually prefer shade, it makes them feel safe and hidden. Some ambient light still slightly lights up the tank in my setup which is just about perfect for them.

I bought a jar through Amazon at the end of September. Price was $6.03, no tax and free shipping with Prime. The price seems to have gone up a little since then.

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I don't understand why I can't display images in a comment but I'll try to link a couple Imgur links below.

This is what they call an "extra large portion."

This is what it looks like this morning.

That tub is about 4½" tall and the water is ~3½" deep. For now every few days I siphon out all but ½" and replace it with new tank water. There are more plants in the tub than it looks like because for reasons I haven't figured out yet, some of the time the plants bunch up so they form a layer ½ to ¾" thick. Other times it spreads itself out to cover the whole surface.

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When I add the buckets to the system I'll plumb the little tub so aerated tank water circulates continuously without disturbing the surface. Thinking I can put the extra air stone back in the fish tank then.

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This is all new to me and doesn't represent the best way; just the best I've come up with so far. Please advise if you have suggestions for improvement.

Let me know if you can't display those Imgur links or if you know how to display an image in a comment like this.

Experimented with it for a school project, some modifications made a big difference. 1) I sacrificed one of the holes on top by placing a dim light bulb {carefully & creatively inside a cup} & my bell pepper plants flowered right away. 2) bought a slightly bigger pump {placed outside} in order to add a ....3) airstone! With help of some really cheap suction cups and "T" valves I was able to add an airstone that circulated the waste more. Jeeze, I even bought little zip ties and strapped some chop sticks on the sides of grow baskets to hold bigger plants like bamboo and bell pepper. I basically just went crazy with the thing and still do when I have extra time! Have fun :)

Here are the amazon links:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E0ETUGW/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_OCLOub1FC8WX5

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0051SM6GW/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_sDLOub07J0BFC

But yea the pump it comes with is wimpy, any cheapo aquarium pump at ur local retail store will be at least 2x stronger. If it's TOO strong, then get these awesome guys:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007HKH7IY/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_pLLOub02317M4

9a, northeast florida. Doesn't get too cold here, but cold enough I lost a fish in October without a heater. The temperature controller is an STC1000, commonly used for homebrewing but it works great for the tank as well, the temperature probe it comes with is water proof, and its cheap. The heater is a 5 gallon bucket heater, designed to get 5 gallons quite hot, but does a good job of keeping 250 gallons at 65. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BDB4UG/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Right now it's in the 40s outside overnight, but usually in the 50-60 range, with really cold snaps to the 20s. I have my system in a plastic tarp greenhouse. The tarp just keeps the wind out because its too thin to actually hold any heat. I'm upgrading to a "real" greenhouse type of 6 mil sheeting that should help hold in heat and maybe reduce the time the heater has to stay operational.

I also have a mini rocket mass heater I built on the side of the tank as an experiment. The exhaust runs through about 60lbs of sand stacked against the side of my wood and pond liner tank before exiting out the top of the greenhouse. Plan was to run that for a few hours before really cold nights, heat up the sand and help keep the side of the tank warm. In reality I dont think the heat is transferring through the wooden walls the tank much if at all. And any ambient heating the sand and heater are doing is being lost through the thin plastic sheeting. I'm interested in seeing how that changes with the thicker plastic too. I only just got the mass heater working though, so it doesn't influence what I said about the water heater.

I am talking about something like this (random link, not an endorsement) that can be used in a DIY setup. Check /u/LEDWizard 's threads to learn more about DIY leds.

Other than that, even just stringing together enough LED spotlights/directional bulbs would do the trick, just not as good as a COB led array (the ones I linked at the beginning).

Or you could go for a couple (or 3) of these ready made panels. Again, this is an example and not an endorsement.

Either way I'm sure it'll be great, because your setup looks pretty sweet as it is and you generally can't go wrong with LEDs. They last a long time and produce the most PAR (photosyntheticaly active radiation) per Watt consumed that any other artificial lighting source.

They're selling you a blackbox education package and some weirdo modular farm for $2500. You have no idea what you're getting in either. All I can tell you is this:

A 200 sq ft system (including everything) cannot feed 8 people. 1,100 lbs of vegetables and 400 lbs of tilapia won't feed 8 people, and that's what they claim their system makes. Average people eat 4.5-5 lbs of food in a day on average, meaning 1652-1825 lbs per year per human. A system that produces 1500 lbs won't even feed one person, but they say it right there:

>This one module will feed 8 people FOREVER

That's a lie. Even on their inflated estimates of how much food they produce, that's an outright lie.

Another thing I know: This system does not include fish tanks. Fish tanks are the most expensive part of every build I've ever done, and this system asks that you provide your own. This system does not include filtering tanks, either, which will run you another good bit of change. Potentially most importantly, This system does not include fish. Food-fish are hard to source, and you'll have to source your own.

And to add insult to injury, this system does not include grow medium or PVC. You are paying over a thousand dollars a unit at the the lowest prices (which you can only get at huge volumes, over 50 units) for grow beds, a patented water pump, two air pumps (for no reason, one air pump works just as well), two air stones, tubing, a patented electrical panel, worm castings, mineral dust, and a list of all the other shit you'll have to buy.

Let's price this out:

• Grow Beds - they're not using box beds, they appear in the pictures to be using black pvc sheeting, like for ponds. 250 ft sq - $150
  
• Water Pump - Dr Nate from Bright Agrotech says moving all of your system volume once every two hours is okay. if you have an 8 inch deep grow bed filled to 2 inches below the top of the medium in a medium that takes 60% of the space in the container that would be roughly 320 gallons, so you need to move roughly 160 gallons an hour, and you'll probably want to move them three feet up. So using Pondmaster pumps (a pretty solid brand I see in heavy use) you'd use the Pondmaster mag Drive 3 - $65
  
• Air pumps - fuck it, use whatever. If it won't kill aquarium fish, it won't kill aquaponic fish This looks like insane overkill, let's buy two, then add air tubing and a fistful of junctions and Four of these air stones and call it a day (I measured NOTHING and I don't regret it, everything I picked was probably insane overkill) for a grand total of $125 for the air setup.
  
• A patented electrical panel? We'll use a surge protector. $10 if we're fancy here.
  
• A pound of worm castings - $6
  
• Two pounds of Azomite Mineral Dust - $12
  
  And the grand total is: $368 for everything they offer, minus the list of other things you'll have to buy.
  
  Hope that list is worth $600+ in your mind.
  
  Seriously though, just go watch all of Bright Agrotech's videos five or seven times apiece to get the science and then read here to figure out what kind of system you want. I just spent fifteen minutes and saved you over a thousand dollars setting up your system. Imagine what you can do in a couple hours.

One thing to remember is that the bacterial colonies that break apart Ammonia into Nitrates/Nitrites don't like living on plastic. Thus, any filtration you have that's made out of plastic is going to be mainly mechanical filtration (strains the chunks out of the water). So, any actual biofiltration is going to be needing something like lava rock, Springflo, hydroton, gravel, etc. It is the best idea to have your mechanical / bio-filtration before your grow bed so you have the least amount of waste accumulating in the actual growbed. Worms help break any blockages (anaerobic bacterial zones), but it's best to have the Ammonia already broken down before the plants. We even find great results with having non-edible plants providing some phyto-filtration before any edible plants. This entirely depends on what plants you're using, but some plants don't like to be so inundated with 'fertilizer', thus it's nice to have a buffer. This, of course, is usually for larger systems.

A great DIY solution is to just have a tub full of lava rock that has the water forced through it before spilling into your grow bed. This provides both mechanical and biological filtration, and keeps the chunkies out of it so they don't coat the roots, which inhibits nitrate/nitrite absorption by the plants.

If it comes down to using electric I have been using [these] (http://www.amazon.com/Allied-Precision-Premier-742G-Bucket/dp/B000BDB4UG/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1382967988&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=bucket+heater). I have them hooked them up to a spa thermostat to turn them on and off.