I would first like to first say that this is by far one of the best sites that I have found in the past 2 months of doing research. I finally decided to register to tell you guys what I'll be building to see if you had any suggestions.
First off I live in Central Illinois and plan on doing an aquaponics system in our house so i don't plan on making a huge system. If this one works out well I'll be building a 275+ gallon FT system outside next summer. That being said here is what my plans are.
Lighting:
I'll be using fluorescent lighting to cover a 4x4 square foot area. The new T-5 HO grow lights look really nice for the job of growing veggies indoors.
GB:
This will be 4x4 foot area. Constructed of 2x12 to make a 8 inch deep grow bed. I plan on using a bell siphon to drain out the grow bed once it reaches 6 inches (want at least 1 inch under the grow medium to keep algae from growing). Since it's indoors I plan on installing 2 bell siphons just in case one fails it doesn’t drain my tanks and spill all over onto concrete floor. 54mm sheet of pond grade fish safe lineing.
Medium: I plan on using the Red Lava Rock from Lowes it's only $3 for .5 cubic feet and I'll need approximately 19 bags. I'll first test it out to make sure the PH doesn’t go to wacky but anyone have experience with this lava rock? I assume it's acts a lot like expanded clay.
here is a link to it:
http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?actio...568&lpage=none
FT:
For the fish tank I plan on using 2 55 gallon totes. I opted for 2 separate fish tanks so I can keep my goldfish from my pond in 1 tote and bluegill/whatever fish I feel like in the other tote. Then when summer comes I can switch out the goldfish for bluegill for something else.
Pump:
I plan on using just a 200 gph fountain pump at 3' which should fill up my
GB in 10-15 minutes. The pump will be in a 55 gallon tote as well that is fed from the bottom fish tank by gravity.
Aeration:
I plan on using a 100-150 gallon fish tank air pump and run 1 line to one of the 55 gallon totes and the 2nd line to the other 55 gallon tote.
My over all setup will be the grow bed above the 3 totes. The water will be pumped into the grow bed for 15 minutes and off for 45 minutes on at timer. The water will then fill up the grow bed and drain after it reaches the 6 inch water mark on the bell siphon. The bell siphon will drain the water into the 1st fish tank which will be 4 inches above the 2nd fish tank which will be 4 inches above the pump tank. I plan on having the totes tiered so that once the water gets to a certain mark on the tote it feeds the water into the system below it. So Tote1 (fish) once hits 50 gallons starts to gravity drain into Tote2 (fish) which once hits 50 gallons will drain into Tote3 (my pump tank).
I would prefer to use all 3 totes as fish tanks but from what I have read the medium will take up approximately 30-40% of the volume of the grow bed. That means that the grow bed will take approximately 35.9-41.9 gallons to fill up to a level where it will start draining via bell siphon. This would leave my 3rd tote sitting at 9-15 gallons which I am assuming would be dangerously low water level for fish to be in for 5-15 minutes every hour as the water cycles. However, I have though I could use this last tote for fingerlings...any suggestions?
My overall goal is to get some veggies/greens over the winter and learn a lot about how I want to do a much bigger system come summer time.
Hope all that made sense if not here is a picture of how I plan on doing it overall:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AZ...azhndA& hl=en
All sugestions welcome.
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Originally Posted by nwestwood
