Over the next week or so i will take you through several iterations of aquaponics designs that i built. Due to moving every couple of years I was able to redesign and rebuild my system several times over. I'll talk about the pluses and minuses of each system and eventually we will end up with my current system and the very large future system that I am currently building.
Unfortunately for this topic, some of these old pictures focused more on the plant growth than the fish. Like most people new to aquaonics, I started with tilapia because everyone seems to reference tilapia in aquaponics. And in fact they are great for a lot of reasons. They are very hardy, disease resistant, fast growers, tolerant of crowding, tolerant of poor water conditions and omnivore (will eat anything). A little known fact is that tilapia also have a fair amount of resistance to low levels of chlorine. Unfortunately their main weakness is temperature and they do not survive year round in an outdoor aquaponics system in north texas. Of all of the conditions mentioned, temperature is by far the most difficult and expensive to control.
My first system was indoor in an apartment. I do not recommend this to anyone. I had 100 gallon fish tank and plumbing sometimes leaks and failures do happen, heh. Also, it was difficult to keep the humidity down and mildew started to become a problem towards the end.
System 1, (small) indoor aquaponics.
It is when you start paying for 1kw/hr power and you are still barely providing enough light for plant growth that you start to truly awe at the magnificent power of the sun.
Mozambique tilapia. I thought i needed sand in the bottom of the tank to get them to build nests and reproduce but this was wrong. Not only will they breed on a plastic/rubber bottom (prolifically) substrate in the fish tank is a nono for aquaponics and RAS in general. It's a place for where solids could get trapped and breakdown aenarobically. Aenarobic zones would cause methane which is toxic to plants and fish. The chicken wire was necessary to keep jumpers from reverse drowning. Jumping seemed to mostly be related to aggression and territory. Lets just say there was not enough territory to go around. Jumping could also happen if water conditions get very poor.
Closer look at basil. There is parsly and cilantro on the far left and far right. They each have an infection of aphids. Spider mites... which are very difficult to deal with indoors and in a way that is safe for both food plants and fish.
Major plant nutrients are Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium. (NPK). Aquaponics is high in Nitrates (N) which is primarily absorbed during vegetative (green) growth and "P" and "K" are absorbed more in flowering or fruiting phases.
My lights are very blue spectrum running 16 hour days. Room temp is usually from 75-80 which simulate moderate june days. This is great for vegetative growth and jalapeno peppers flourished. (I did have to manually pollinate the blooms to get peppers to make using a very soft bristled makeup brush i got form cvs.) My roma tomato plants grew long and lanky and never bloomed. People do grow tomatoes in aquaponics even with the relatively low P-K. Some use addatives, some just limit the amount of P-K intense plants in the system. I think my primary problem was a poor choice of tomato variety for my environment and secondly a lack of orange spectrum (fall) light to trigger blooming.
Summary,
This was the last time i tried an indoor system (excluding a garage tilapia wintering system that i will cover in a later post). I do not recommend it. Costs of lights alone are prohibitive for indoor growth. You have to be prepared to change light duration and spectrum to provide "seasonal" conditions for some types of plants to flourish. Green non-blooming plants like herbs, lettuces and cabbages do very well.
Brian
