Hi Everyone, I'm Mark from Salt Lake City.
I've been trying to find a way to do a workable and aesthetically pleasing aquaponics system since last fall. I was keeping a journal with pictures about it on PlantedTank.net and Aquatic Plant Central for a while if you want to spend the time reading about different failed attempts I've tried.
The System I have now is a 75 (US) Gallon fish tank (4 Feet Long by 18 inches wide by about 2 feet tall) with some planter boxes (slightly more than 6 inches tall by 2 feet long by about 6 inches wide at the widest point) set into the top of the tank so that the bottom half of the boxes are submerged and the tops aren't. I wait for the water to evaporate until the water level drops below the bottom of the planter boxes and then refill. This is a pretty good way to start plants, but I can't get any flowers/blooms so that I can actually get vegetables from the setup.
I don't particularly like seafood so haven't kept any game fish. The tank has 3 fantail goldfish, a dwarf pleco, some feeder guppy fry, 2 or 3 siamensis, and a small zebra loach. Eventually I'll get some weather loaches and maybe some feeder goldfish too.
The issues I'm dealing with are:
*humidity levels in my condo prevent me from using a heater in the water - we had the water about 20 degrees Farenheit warmer than the air in our house and got condensation, then mildew without realizing it, and were on our way to black mold when we discovered it. We've taken the heater out of the tank and it stays between 66 and 70 Farenheit now, which is too cold for most tropical fish.
*Cost - I can't afford the price of most commercial grow beds so I have to get creative and haven't found a leak-proof system yet other than the planter boxes in the top of the tank. As I said, this doesn't actually let the boxes flower
*It has to be an inside-only project because the HOA won't allow us to grow food plants outside and I live in a temperate climate where the cold would prevent any plant growth and possibly kill any fish during at least half of the year (More like 9 months of the year). I haven't seen many aquaponics systems that are inside-only unless they're in a basement with a lot of space. Unfortunately, the only space I have is in my living room and I have to build verticallty instead of horizontally.
It seems like Flood and drains work best from what I've read but that was pretty noisy when I was trying it with one of the iterations in my journal, though that may be because I had the grow bed directly over the fish tank and used PVC for water returns rather than flexible plastic tubing. I have a hard time finding tubing that is wide enough to drain the grow bed as fast as my pump or canister filter can fill it.
I like the looks of the Earth Solutions Little Tokyo setup, but I'm not going to pay that high of a price for something I should be able to build myself for much less money. Their pictures don't show the mechanics of which style system they use, though. If I tried to build something like that for a 75 gallong tank, would it HAVE to be flood and drain?
If you're still with me after all that explanation, thanks for reading. Do you have any suggestions on what kind of setup would be best in my situation?
Reply With Quote
