I am here for gardening with my ponds as well. I ran across this searching the term "aquaponics" but I am not seeing anything to do with aquaponics yet really. I am setting up to do floating raft gardens on some of my ponds this year and came here hoping for some ideas and direction.

After 4 years of study and exploring a thousand ideas on paper I think I am ready to venture into aquaponics. Our weather is so cold here that we can be in the low 20's F the first week of July and with average first frost at September 17th we commonly don't get much of a growing season for gardening. I figured with the plants on the water it would help to protect from frost and allow me to plant earlier and grow later into the year. It also removes watering issues which are quite a headache for me.

As for your idea, I am not sure that 25 bluegill will cover too many plants, you might go a bit bigger in scope on the aquarium side. The garden is not a bad size, starting small seems wise. I have seen where people make very simple pools utilizing pallets and then plastic, you might be able to make a 500 to 1,000 gallon tank without much cost or effort and go with quite a bit more fish.