hamstermann

I have my aquaponics setup almost done and now need some fish to put in it. Since I'm not growing the fish to eat them like some aquaponics hobbyists do and I'll have aquatic plants in the tank as well as the vegetables in the garden portion of the setup, I'd prefer to get fish with the following qualities:

*Freshwater
*Colorful
*Community (non-aggressive)
*Will leave my aquatic plants and shrimp alone
*Large (I have a 75 gal)
*somewhat high waste producing since I'll need lots of nitrates in the water for the plants in the garden part of the setup as well as the ones in the tank.

I'm not a big fan of goldfish and I hear they rip up plants anyway. anyone got suggestions?

Six

...googling aquaponic....

OK, so it's just a hydroponics container that is see thru?

You're looking for fish that aren't really possible... big fish are usually aggressive or plant eaters. Do you have an inkling of what species you want to try? Goldfish may leave the plants alone if you feed them well and yes, they will produce a lot of waste. Personally, I'd do an oscar. They knock plants around but don't eat them. Or try other large central/south american cichlids. I'd suggest large barbs (tear drops are awesome) but they'll pick at the roots.

I guess I'm not much help. Can you post a pic of your set up? I'm curious...

hamstermann

yeah, I'll get a pic (or maybe a Tank Journal Thread) up as soon as it's picture-worthy.

To Clarify, Aquaponics is similar to hydroponics, but takes it a step further. For most in the aquaponics hobby, they'll keep food fish (Perch, Tilapi, etc) in a fish tank with no decorations or substrate. Then they pump the water from the fish tank into a grow bed (usually gravel or gravel with some perlite in it) where garden vegetables and flowers take up all the nutrients in the water. There's no dirt in the grow bed to muddy things up. The water is then pumped or gravity-fed back into the tank for the fish. When the fish and plants are edible, the hobbyist eats them, then replaces them with more to start growing again. I'm not much on seafood so will have an aquascape in the tank instead, but I'm going to try to grow onions, Garlic, Peppers, Peas, and Carrots. and maybe eventually some Tomatoes. I'm told that veggies grown this way are much bigger and tastier than those grown in conventional dirt-gardens.

Advantages to this kind of setup is that you never have to do a water change, you just top off what evaporates. You also get fresh veggies all year long. and because the demand for nutrients is so heavy, I'm guessing you don't have to worry too much about algae

Because I want the tank plants and the grow bed plants to be lush, I'm going to overstock the tank by quite a bit to get enough nitrates to go around.

Another option I'm considering is 2-3 large schools of small fish. (Maybe a school of zebra danios, one of guppies, and another of neon tetras for instance). I've never had a fish larger than a 10 in pleco before, though, so I'm torn between doing schools of small fish or having 8-10 large fish in the tank instead.

As far as big fish, Oscars do sound fun. I've read they're the puppy-dogs of the fish world. I've also wondered about keeping Festivum or blue rams, but being that those are still cichlids, there's the aggression issue to think about.

benderisawesome

I know a guy who built a system this summer using 2, 50 gallon plastic barrels and he used tilapia in his setup. The tilapia did pretty well but they're not exactly colorful. I'm not really sure what would work well AND leave your shrimp alone. What about plecos I know mine produces a lot of waste lol. I'm not sure though if they would leave your shrimp alone.

P.S. Cant wait to see your system I've been toying with the idea of making an aquaponic system.

Here's the system my friend built. It's pretty ingenious. Check out the other stuff on his website it's pretty awesome.
http://www.fastonline.org/content/view/15/29/

Six

Sounds cool. Post in this thread if you start a journal, that way I can find it.

hamstermann

Thanks, yeah I;m still working out how to do this inside with a planted tank since winters in Utah are not so conducive to growing plants outdoors.

Benderisawesome - Your friend's setup is pretty cool. Wish I lived in a climate warm enough to try it. Or had a greenhouse. Either one.

ddavila06

what about a school of medium size rainbows like turcuoise or boesmani, youknow 10-12 fish should do well and maybe a school of corie cats about the same quatities. they are colorful, active and shouln't bother the shrimp. i have some cherry shrimp in my 125 with angels, rainbows cories and some other fairly large fish with no issues because i have plenty of plants.

i do something similar to what you do but way low tech, just pump the water into the garden and the plants are doing really well feeding off the fish crap

Six

Yeah! Rainbows! :3

hamstermann

As a result of my major MTS and the desire for a garden that Erin and I both have, we decided to set up an aquaponic system in our house because our Condo Association won't allow us to plant fruit/vegetable plants outside. It's been pretty expensive and confusing figuring it all out, but I think we're well-enough on our way now that I can pass on some knowledge to other people who may be interested and save them quite a few bucks in the process.

First thing to do, of course, is build a stand for the fish tank:



Yes, that's our dinner table and a borrowed chop-saw from my dad. You find, living in a condo, that rooms must have multiple uses. Erin's so good to let me do the cutting and everything on the table so that I can use the window behind it as a saw horse.



My daughter left a message in the sawdust.







This is my favorite way to build a stand. It's simple and extra strong because each corner is reinforced . It also balances well when you're screwing it in. As you can see in that last picture, I didn't even need my wood clamps!

One of the major things I wanted to try with this setup is a Reverse Flow Under-Gravel Filter. I first heard of this from Hoppy over at PlantedTank.Net. The idea is that instead of pulling the water down through the sand, to the canister filter, then returning it at the top of the tank like you would with an undergravel filter, you pull the water from the water column to the canister filter, then feed it back into the tank from below the sand so that there are more nutrients for the plants (particularly the root-feeding plants) to thrive on. I loved this idea and thought I'd try it. The first shot below is the empty tank with a layer of Sphagnum Peat Moss on the tank floor, then a do-it-yourself Filter made of 1/2 inch PVC that would connect to the canister filter hose with a Funny Pipe barb in the corner:



Each of those pipes has holes drilled in them and the holes are pointing down at the bottom of the tank so that the water running through them doesn't just shoot holes in the substrate I'd put on top of them.



The next thing I did was add Perlite. The Perlite and Moss are to add nutrients for the plants since I'd planned on using Pool Filter sand to plant the plants in. Pool filter sand is recommended as one of the cheaper Aquarium Substrates because it doesn't break down and crush the roots of plants very easily. It also allows the water to flow through it fairly easily so that you don't get any "stagnant" spots that develop harmful anaerobic bateria. That bacteria eventually forms a bubble, floats to the surface, then pops and kills your fish and plants.

What I should have done at this point:
1: Use some of the more expensive Substrate. (Eco Complete by CaribSea is what I eventually ended up going back to)

If the substrate is disturbed in ANY way (like planting the plants or adding water too quickly), the moss turns the water to mud and the perlite floats to the top of your tank and blocks the light from getting in. It also looks ugly and messy. I've skimmed the water with a fish tank net several times, changed the water, and completely changed the substrate in the tank now and there's STILL perlite in there.

In addition to those issues, Pool filter sand acts like sandpaper and has contributed to the erosion of a few layers of skin on my fingertips every time I need to re-plant a plant or move something in the substrate in the tank.

hamstermann

Had to break this up a bit so I didn't seem too long-winded.



This was one of the ideas of my own that I liked the most. I'd never heard of a PVC drain when starting this project, so ended up making my own. That's a 1/2 inch PVC 90 degree elbow with a sink filter caulked into it. It's great for keeping fry (fish Babies) out of the filter.

Sadly, it also seems to make the filter suck in air somehow, though I'm not sure how or why. With Canister filters, that can lead to cavitation, which can hurt the impeller (the part of the filter that spins around in the motor to actually pump the water). With my filter, An XP3, I know I can replace the impeller when needed and I've read on several Aquaponics websites that the plants need a lof of oxygen, so I'm wondering whether I shouldn't just allow it to stay on the canister intake or not. I need to do some more research on cavitation, I guess.



This is the Grow Bed. (or one version of it that we've tried.) In Aquaponics, fish tank water is pumped to a grow bed that is filled with some sort of media. The aquaponics kits you can buy for several hundered dollers use baked compressed clay because of its ability to hold moisture and nutrients for the plants to use. I was trying to save money and used the moss and perlite combo mentioned before with some rocks from outside our house, some epoxy coated aquarium gravel, and some pool filter sand. This didn't allow for enough flow to the tank return pipe and the pool filter sand continued to grind skin off my wet hands when I'd try to work with it.

In the setup in the picture, there is one input and one output. I nearly flooded our kitchen several times (and di create several large puddles) trying to get the flow right on this setup. I never did get it right. the Grow bed is proving to be one of the trickiest things to figure out (and I still don't have it figured out yet!)






In these pictures, you can see the outflow plan. I was trying to fill the tank without disturbing the substrate. The muddy water in the second picture shows you how unsuccessful I was.

the grow bed connections were done with Do-it-yourself bulk Heads made by putting rubber o-rings on both sides of the holes I'd drilled in the plastic, then squishing that against the plastic with a female flush-bushing on the inside of the grow bed and a male bushing piece on the outside. That would then connect to a ball valve to try to control flow.

What I should have done:

1. Use bigger PVC for the outflow/drains. 1/2 inch just doesn't seem to drain as well as it should. that small is fine for the inflow, but the outflow needs more help.

2. Keep the holes even. I drilled the holes in an impatient hurry so the hole saw splintered the plastic and made a jagged edge. Just like with drilling a fish tank, if you have any pressure at all besides the weight of the drill (assuming it's a light drill), the hole becomes jagged and harder to create a water-tight seal against.

Also, on the first grow bed version, I put the inflow hole as low as I could on the growbed and the outflow hole in about the vertical middle. I changed this on the next vesion because if your pump stops for any reason at all, the inflow hole becomes an outflow hole and your whole grow bed dries out, potentially killing your seeds. By having both holes at least mid-way up the grow bed, if the power goes out, there's a little water left in there for your seeds. That's for if you want a constant submerged aquaponic sytem. (learn about the different aquaponics systems here). If you'd prefer Ebb and flow, maybe the holes having different heights is what you want.

3. Use More holes.
I eventually did end up putting more outflow holes in. This helped it drain faster, but still with 1/2 inch PVC, I needed a lot of holes. I have 4 in that particular grow bed now and it's still not enough. Plus, with more holes, there's more places that can (and do) leak.