# Aquaponics?



## AWolf (Jun 13, 2014)

If you are growing houseplants, yes. If you are growing vegetables/herbs, no. From my experience, it is not the most efficient system on a small scale (average fish tank). Large scale systems are complicated and not practical for the average home. Most terrestrial plants need high fertilization. You would need a lot of big fish to create large amounts of detritus to feed the plants. Even then, you will need to add fertilizers for growing any vegetables or herbs. These fertilizers will make your aquarium into a green water nightmare. Not to mention the effects on fish. In the large scale operation I have seen, they inject fertilizers down line from the aquarium, so that they are taken up by the plants before entering the aquarium again. 

You could grow house plants fairly well. But you will still need to add fertilizers for the best growth. So in my opinion, they are more work than they are worth. A riparium/paludarium type set up makes more sense with aquariums and fish.


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## PlantedRich (Jul 21, 2010)

I have not done it myself but do have friends who do it on a somewhat less organized way. Rather than dump the water or use it to grow plants in the tank, they have separate tanks and move the water manually. Bit too much work for me but they grow great plants. Small things like veggies and herbs are ideal. They sometimes leave the plants in small trays to make it easy to move from inside to outside ponds as the weather changes. I could see using a connection from the main tank to the growing tank so that a water change would let the excess flow to the plant tank. Extra fertilizer is optional. Much the same as the plants we grow in the planted tanks, we can add ferts if we choose or not, depending on what we each want. 
In my area organic produce is high priced so there is a good market for aquaponic grown items. The cheap land makes it practical to use large tanks like metal stock tanks as the containers rather than glass tanks. 
I find the definition of aquaponics, planted tanks , etc. is a pretty loose term so in searching, you will likely find a wide variety of methods.


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## darklord (Feb 22, 2015)

AWolf said:


> If you are growing houseplants, yes. If you are growing vegetables/herbs, no. From my experience, it is not the most efficient system on a small scale (average fish tank). Large scale systems are complicated and not practical for the average home. Most terrestrial plants need high fertilization. You would need a lot of big fish to create large amounts of detritus to feed the plants. Even then, you will need to add fertilizers for growing any vegetables or herbs. These fertilizers will make your aquarium into a green water nightmare. Not to mention the effects on fish. In the large scale operation I have seen, they inject fertilizers down line from the aquarium, so that they are taken up by the plants before entering the aquarium again.
> 
> You could grow house plants fairly well. But you will still need to add fertilizers for the best growth. So in my opinion, they are more work than they are worth. A riparium/paludarium type set up makes more sense with aquariums and fish.


Hi AWolf,

Thank You for the input, I had tried house plants, like Syngonium podophyllum (Arrowhead), Spathiphyllum (Peace Lily), giant asian Taro (Yam) and money plant. Some of them I grew in riparium style and some in small aquaponics in my sump filter. That is when I figure I should expand this into herbs and vege. The arrowheads and Taro had outgrown all the aquatic plants and remove all nitrate really fast, which is great for the fish. Then it starts to take over the tank, with roots and grows to a big size that block out the light and so I decided to pull them out.

Since I so successful with these house plant, I started to look into aquaponics seriously, but I still love planted tanks.
So here I am trying to link planted tanks to aquaponics.



PlantedRich said:


> I have not done it myself but do have friends who do it on a somewhat less organized way. Rather than dump the water or use it to grow plants in the tank, they have separate tanks and move the water manually. Bit too much work for me but they grow great plants. Small things like veggies and herbs are ideal. They sometimes leave the plants in small trays to make it easy to move from inside to outside ponds as the weather changes. I could see using a connection from the main tank to the growing tank so that a water change would let the excess flow to the plant tank. Extra fertilizer is optional. Much the same as the plants we grow in the planted tanks, we can add ferts if we choose or not, depending on what we each want.
> In my area organic produce is high priced so there is a good market for aquaponic grown items. The cheap land makes it practical to use large tanks like metal stock tanks as the containers rather than glass tanks.
> I find the definition of aquaponics, planted tanks , etc. is a pretty loose term so in searching, you will likely find a wide variety of methods.


Hi PlantedRich,

I am setting up a full linked up system with planted tanks to supply nutrients to the aquaponic system. I am thinking of using swirl filter and planters box as grow bed, which will act as bio-media filter for the planted tanks. I will grow the herbs and vege in these planter boxes. For me, who stay in the city, land is very expensive and organic grown food is really high price. I think I could help using my hobby of fish keeping and planted tanks to grow some food for my household.

Present system in this Link (http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/100-low-tech-forum/929361-my-little-ecosystem.html)

I intend to setup automated water flow system with pvc pipes to link up the whole system.


I will continue to update my setup plan for everyone to give input to help me improve the setup. Cheers!

Below is the master plan I drew using powerpoint.


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## rininger85 (Jun 30, 2013)

Hi Darklord. I'm not sure how much help I can be, but I'm in the planning stages of a full scale aquaponics system. I am building a 16x16 greenhouse in my back yard this spring and planning on eventually placing (4) IBC totes for fish tanks / grow beds. I am in a cold climate so I am attempting to set my greenhouse up to be passive solar heat with very little electricity use to power pumps for the AP system and lights just to be able to see what I'm doing in the dark... otherwise I don't want to use electricity / fuel to heat it. I just came on here to see if I could find any other people in to AP to talk with while I start my new venture.


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## Nordic (Nov 11, 2003)

Sorry but no, tuberculosis is a [email protected]%&.


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## AquaAurora (Jul 10, 2013)

My 55g was an aquponic tan for a while (journal link in signature page 3-7). I did an NFT system-4" pvc pipe with holes (can be cut but we used "t"s for planter). I simply put the pipe above the tank and have the canister filter return go through the pvc then dump back into the tank. I grew lettuce (was very tender and tasty) and some herbs for a bit. The tank had a poop monster pleco that fed the plants well (I also dosed searchem ferts in the water for the plants-no noticeable side effect on us for eating them, and used seachem prime for dechlorinate water, tank and fish never had meds used on them). I ran a 2 bulb t5 6500k light above the plants and they grew above the light over time.
I eventually had to re-home the pleco as it pooped so much it kept clogging the canister filter and I took down the aquaponic system then. I now do ripariums (non edible plants and roots are directly in the tank).
Look up youtube aquaponics, I've seen several videos of people with cichlid communities or goldfish tanks do aquaponics as they provide a lot of nitrates for the plants.


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## darklord (Feb 22, 2015)

Hey all, I was not active in this thread. Let's me pick this up again.

I would like to share Overflow PVC piping designs, I had research from other forums and Youtube.









Reference from: want to know how to DIY overflow box or pipe - DIY Forum - Singapore Reef Club

This is a great link on how to make a PVC overflow pipe. No drill to tank.

Youtube source:
https://youtu.be/UZytENJZtJw



rininger85 said:


> Hi Darklord. I'm not sure how much help I can be, but I'm in the planning stages of a full scale aquaponics system. I am building a 16x16 greenhouse in my back yard this spring and planning on eventually placing (4) IBC totes for fish tanks / grow beds. I am in a cold climate so I am attempting to set my greenhouse up to be passive solar heat with very little electricity use to power pumps for the AP system and lights just to be able to see what I'm doing in the dark... otherwise I don't want to use electricity / fuel to heat it. I just came on here to see if I could find any other people in to AP to talk with while I start my new venture.


Hi rininger85,

Wow, having land to build a greenhouse is really cool.

In my area, land is really expensive, and what I can do is only small scale home aquaponics.

Heat is not an issue here though, as it is always spring or summer, so it is in abundance.
I've started rigging up the pvc pipping. As my setup is with planted tanks, I would still want to be able to view my fish and aquarium plants. I am research on Overflow PVC piping designs, which I saw on Youtube and some sharing by some reefer in above.

We can always talk about AP, but my experience may not be that relevant to you.



Nordic said:


> Sorry but no, tuberculosis is a [email protected]%&.


Hi Nordic,

Is tuberculosis a link to AP, please elaborate. Cheers!



AquaAurora said:


> My 55g was an aquponic tan for a while (journal link in signature page 3-7). I did an NFT system-4" pvc pipe with holes (can be cut but we used "t"s for planter). I simply put the pipe above the tank and have the canister filter return go through the pvc then dump back into the tank. I grew lettuce (was very tender and tasty) and some herbs for a bit. The tank had a poop monster pleco that fed the plants well (I also dosed searchem ferts in the water for the plants-no noticeable side effect on us for eating them, and used seachem prime for dechlorinate water, tank and fish never had meds used on them). I ran a 2 bulb t5 6500k light above the plants and they grew above the light over time.
> I eventually had to re-home the pleco as it pooped so much it kept clogging the canister filter and I took down the aquaponic system then. I now do ripariums (non edible plants and roots are directly in the tank).
> Look up youtube aquaponics, I've seen several videos of people with cichlid communities or goldfish tanks do aquaponics as they provide a lot of nitrates for the plants.


Hi AquaAurora,

It is encouraging to hear that someone had actually done planted tanks with AP. Did you observe any symptom on the aquatic plants, if having vege or herbs in an AP connect may compete for the nutrients and leaving the aquatic plants to melt?

It always nice to have someone to share. Cheers!


Please comment on my design in Post 4


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## AquaAurora (Jul 10, 2013)

darklord said:


> Hi AquaAurora,
> 
> It is encouraging to hear that someone had actually done planted tanks with AP. Did you observe any symptom on the aquatic plants, if having vege or herbs in an AP connect may compete for the nutrients and leaving the aquatic plants to melt?
> 
> It always nice to have someone to share. Cheers!


I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I had aquatic plants with my aquaponic system I meant that I used aquatic plant ferts (seachem) for the aquaponics. The whole reason for why I had an aquaponics system was because my pleco would eat every plant I put in the tank (even though he was very well fed) so I needed to keep plants out of reach, hence the NFT system and not a simple fact setup-he'd just pull them under and eat roots and leaves if I did rafts right on the tank.

I do however keep riparium plants with aquatic plants and have not had an issue with difficencies. I use the same liquid ferts and all plants have been doing well.


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## rininger85 (Jun 30, 2013)

darklord said:


> I would like to share Overflow PVC piping designs, I had research from other forums and Youtube.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Personally I would caution you against the PVC overflow. I spent quite a bit of time reading / tinkering trying to get my PVC overflow to work in my first reef tank and eventually ended up scrapping it because it was so prone to failure that I couldn't sleep at night with the thought of my tank overflowing... I'll include a link to a thread I started on another forum that discusses the issues I encountered and my attempts to get the DIY PVC overflow to work... just some things to take in to consider if you are going to try it...
DIY PVC Overflow Restart Help - The Reef Tank

we have lots of space here for the greenhouse... where I live there are more cows than people/houses. I should probably build the greenhouse bigger, but I'm trying to keep myself to my original plan of a 16ft x 16ft space to keep costs down even though I am very excited about getting started in aquaponics and imagine once I get started I'll be addicted and want to expand...


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## Diana (Jan 14, 2010)

While the drawings of plumbing details are interesting, I think the first order of importance is to look at energy levels. 

Plants of all sorts need certain things to grow. If you want more plants you need more of all the things they need. It does not matter if they live under water or above, or if you are harvesting them to eat or for sale. If your system gives them all they need they will grow. If your system lacks something, then the plants will not grow. 

In designing a system like this, lets break it down to its most basic components. Draw a circle. This is the water flow. Put 3 tubs in the circle. 
1) Grow plants to eat.
2) Grow fish and plants
3) Pump/filter/equipment etc. 

Now put some arrows going into and out of each tub. 
Tub 1) Input needs to be fertilizers and light (CO2 from the air). 
Output is plants to eat. Every plant you remove from the system removes a certain amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and so on. 
Tub 2) Input needs to be fish food and oxygen for the fish, and fertilizer for the plants (could be fish food), perhaps CO2 for the plants, light for the plants. 
Output needs to be anything that is toxic to the fish (nitrogen, primarily), and organic waste that create conditions that can lead to diseased fish. Output might also be fish (to eat or sell), which means a loss of the materials that make up fish- Nitrogen etc. 
Tub 3) Is a place to balance it all. I am including your sumps, pumps, and all other equipment in this 'tub'. The waste from the aquariums is collected, the water flow is modified for optimum oxygen for the fish, heater or chiller would be linked in and so on. 

Looking at the first 2 tubs in the system, you want to balance the fish (or other animals) with the plants (both aquatic and above water). The fish act only to decompose fish food, and turn it into fertilizer in the simplest view. If you have enough fish then you will be adding enough fish food to supply most of the plant needs for N, P, K etc. Perhaps not all, but corrections are small. If you do not have enough fish then you can grow fewer plants or add more fertilizers right before the vegetable part of the cycle. 

If you just follow nitrogen as representative of all the nutrients through the cycle you can figure out if you have enough, need to add more, or need faster removal. 

You add nitrogen in the form of fish food protein. Fish and microorganisms digest the food and send it on its way to the plants. Some plants are in the fish tanks and remove some of the nitrogen right there. The remaining nitrogen goes on to the vegetable beds and is used by the plants growing there. Some nitrogen is in the form of solids that you are collecting. (Are you reusing these? or is this a loss to the system?). When you harvest the crops you are removing nitrogen from the system. If you eat the fish or are raising ornamental fish for sale you are removing their nitrogen etc from the system.
So, the big question is: Are you adding enough nitrogen (and all other nutrients) to support the removal in the form of vegetables
ornamental plants (perhaps you are giving away or selling the trimmings to other aquarium keepers?)
fish to eat
ornamental fish to give away or sell

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OK, so back to your drawing:
1) If you are going to this much work, drill the tanks. Do not depend on the PVC overflow.
2) Do not need 4 sumps with 'hamster tubes'. One sump collects all the water from all the tanks. This sump IS the swirl chamber. Water is removed from the upper (clean) area for sending on to the vegetables. You could use a manifold here to direct different amounts to each bed depending on what each needs to grow, if this is needed. There are different styles of beds for growing things and they may need different water flows. 

The fish tanks will be high enough up that the swirl/sump can be gravity fed via an overflow through a bulkhead. (There are ways to set this up so the debris from the bottom of the fish tank is removed) The swirl aspect is accessible to clean the accumulated debris, perhaps a pipe and ball valve that leads off to the side. You can attach a hose and fill a bucket with the solids. This swirl-sump can be on a low platform, just a few inches, to accommodate some plumbing. 

Remember that there is a lot of water weight in all of this, so build strong tables to support things, or else use the floor or ground and pump the water from place to place. Ultimately you will need to pump the water uphill at least once, even if everything else is downhill, gravity feed. You then need strong structures to support the weight of the water in the higher and middle containers. If you break this into sections, keep each part at the same level, and put a pump between each section each pump will be smaller. 

---------------------------------------

rininger, you will need to heat the system, or else only run it in mild to warm weather. I am having a really hard time trying to get just solar heat to work in my greenhouse here in 'sunny' California.


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## darklord (Feb 22, 2015)

AquaAurora said:


> I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I had aquatic plants with my aquaponic system I meant that I used aquatic plant ferts (seachem) for the aquaponics. The whole reason for why I had an aquaponics system was because my pleco would eat every plant I put in the tank (even though he was very well fed) so I needed to keep plants out of reach, hence the NFT system and not a simple fact setup-he'd just pull them under and eat roots and leaves if I did rafts right on the tank.
> 
> I do however keep riparium plants with aquatic plants and have not had an issue with deficiencies. I use the same liquid ferts and all plants have been doing well.


Hi AquaAurora,

No worries, it is always great to talk to a new person on ideas, always can get a fresh perspective and learn new things.

Yes, I have one pleco too, which is also very greedy. I think it is a L001. It does a great job cleaning, which I had no complain about it's performance.
And it has also been sticking it's mouth on water surface near the tank wall to skim for fish food flakes and pellets, which I am feeding the tiger barbs. They're tank mates.

It has not eaten any of my plants yet, but I will have to monitor it.

I've 2 goldfish, they are another thing altogether. No plant will survive those 2.


I am using dry ferts and root tabs now for my planted tanks, and I guess I will stick to this routine.
There seems to be not much reference on planted tanks and AP.

My present setup is riparium natural style is My Little Ecosystem


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## AquaAurora (Jul 10, 2013)

darklord said:


> Hi AquaAurora,
> 
> No worries, it is always great to talk to a new person on ideas, always can get a fresh perspective and learn new things.
> 
> ...


You might talk to xjasnimex on this forum her and a few others have manged goldfish planted tanks. But I'll note theirs are the slower twin tailed egg shaped goldfish. It was recommended that a diet with plenty of vegetable matter would keep the goldfish from eating the aquarium plants.
Her journal:
http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/1...-jasmines-low-tech-planted-goldfish-tank.html

I'd admittedly considered trying goldfish recently but I think I'll stick to tropical fish for now (with the exception of my white clouds).


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## darklord (Feb 22, 2015)

rininger85 said:


> Personally I would caution you against the PVC overflow. I spent quite a bit of time reading / tinkering trying to get my PVC overflow to work in my first reef tank and eventually ended up scrapping it because it was so prone to failure that I couldn't sleep at night with the thought of my tank overflowing... I'll include a link to a thread I started on another forum that discusses the issues I encountered and my attempts to get the DIY PVC overflow to work... just some things to take in to consider if you are going to try it...
> DIY PVC Overflow Restart Help - The Reef Tank
> 
> we have lots of space here for the greenhouse... where I live there are more cows than people/houses. I should probably build the greenhouse bigger, but I'm trying to keep myself to my original plan of a 16ft x 16ft space to keep costs down even though I am very excited about getting started in aquaponics and imagine once I get started I'll be addicted and want to expand...



Hi rininger85,

I saw your page when I was researching on the PVC Overflow in that forum The Reef Tank. It gave me a bit of discouragement too.

But then I came across some interesting experiments conducted by some, they had connecting the bleed line from the Overflow PVC pipe to the venturi intake of the return pump.

I think it will work, I going to try it out.

Would like to see your aquaponic greenhouse, it must be a major project. I think like aquarium hobby, aquaponic is going to be addictive. From what I had researched, there are some people who put red compost worms in their grow bed, some extreme even put pee in it.

They are either called vermiponics with the worms, or peeponics with the pee.

We shall know once our system is up.

Cheers!


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## rininger85 (Jun 30, 2013)

Diana said:


> rininger, you will need to heat the system, or else only run it in mild to warm weather. I am having a really hard time trying to get just solar heat to work in my greenhouse here in 'sunny' California.


Diana, what is your average low there in 'sunny' California? Probably a bit warmer than here, but northern Cali still gets fairly cold doesn't it?

I'm starting a thread to post up my plans for the greenhouse, I would love some feedback on what you might change from your experience.

http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/8...assive-solar-greenhouse-aquaponics-setup.html


darklord said:


> Hi rininger85,
> 
> I saw your page when I was researching on the PVC Overflow in that forum The Reef Tank. It gave me a bit of discouragement too.
> 
> ...


darklord, I think using a venturi of some sort to keep the air from filling up the overflow is the only way to be successful with a PVC overflow, I had attempted using the venturi port on a powerhead in the tank to try and draw the air out but it didn't work, so then I thought using a TOM's aqualifter would probably work pretty well, but I never got around to trying it.

With that said, if you haven't started building the system yet I would still highly recommend drilling the tanks. It is much much more reliable, and drilling a tank really isn't very hard... need a diamond bit and a drill, then I like to tape off the entire area to be drilled with painter's tape both inside and outside the tank, mark where the cut will go from outside the tank and slowly start drilling. I think the tape helps the drill get started without sliding as much, and it also holds the glass chunk on the inside from falling and smacking the other piece of glass when it finishes. When I drilled my sump for my big reef tank it took me maybe 10 minutes to drill 2 holes and that was because I was pretty cautious having never drilled glass before.

I posted the link for my greenhouse thread above, come tag along, I'll head over there and put some more details in it.


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## darklord (Feb 22, 2015)

rininger85 said:


> Diana, what is your average low there in 'sunny' California? Probably a bit warmer than here, but northern Cali still gets fairly cold doesn't it?
> 
> I'm starting a thread to post up my plans for the greenhouse, I would ....
> 
> ...


Hi rininger85,

Sorry didn't get around to update everyone. The flow rate for overflow is really good and I'm using the powerhead air inlet to continuously suck the air out. 

Update on progress
PVC Overflow Pipeoutput flow video as promised.


 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj11ks1QS7Y

Looking at the current flow rate, it looks pretty good and very high.

I think based on the designer's flowrate calculation it should be about 200gph to a maximum of 1260gph.

I found that this design is very versatile and the output flowrate will adjust according to input into the tanks.

I will try to pull out one of the PVC Overflow pipe to show everyone about the transparent pipe as compare to normal PVC pipe for the big pipe in tanks.





Sent from my HM NOTE 1LTE using Tapatalk


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