Aquaponics - 400 liter barrelponics

This is a 400 liter barrel ponics that i built with two 200 liter barrels interconnected for the fish tank and 2 barrels cut in half to form the 4 growbeds. For the sump tank i used a 300 liter loft tank.
The system was set up some time ago. The build was simple with 40 mm square section of treated pine that was put together with a clever load bearing design the barrels sat comfortably on the frames.


The fish tank was placed strategically under the overhead tanks of the house to avoid direct sunlight and this gives the FT plenty of insulation from the elements.
Bell siphon was put in place and the plumbing was done using 19 mm cpvp pipes with control valves at every water exit point.
Once the system was all hooked up we ran the system for about 3 days for all the dust etc get settled down at the bottom of the growbed and for the water to get cleared.

3 days later I introduces 10 gold fish. This is very less number of fish for this size tank, but this was done because I was looking at cycling this system with fish.

Then I ran the system for a week and added a another round of 10 gold fish. By now a few seeds was also thrown into the growbeds. It took almost 6 weeks for the nitrogen cycle to get established. During this time a few tweaks was done to the bell siphion upstand to get the flood and drain cycle to set well. 8 weeks later the system was running fine and in three months time the system was well set and the tomato plant were already starting to fruit.

How does Aquaponics work? - The basic blue print

Benefits of Aquaponics

What type of growmedia not to use

A lot of people have been asking me if we can use smaller pebbles, sane or cocopete for the grow media in an aquaponics system.
So i decided to give it a try.
I used small pebbles in this experiment, the pebbles were about 5 mm in size. easy to handle and the system started to grow well.

Well as a lot of experts from various online forums did mention that this will not work.
And after a few months, tomatoes were happily growing until one day i noticed that the water flow was not the way i would have liked it to be.
This is precisely 5 months  after i started the system and the problem started.

Root clogging, had caused the problem .. the roots were really big and used up all the space between the small pebbles and there was no space for the water to flow. Also the flood and drain did stop working and this adds to the supply of oxygen the to roots to be cut off.

 So what i have learned from this experiment is that, for a media based Aquaponics system to work well, the grow media have to be atleast 20 mm. The ideal material is LECA - Light Expanded Clay Aggregate also known as Hydroton.
This is a little expensive material and one ca use 20 - 25 mm gravel or river pebbles as well.
 Gravel or river pebbles are a lot heavier compared to the LECA, so having a large system on your roof top with gravel or river pebbles will be a bit challenging.

What is Aquaponics?

DIY Miniponics - Aquaponics in under 10 $

Shifting tilapias

So the last weekend was filled with action as i noticed the solidwaste in my 500 liter system is creating a problem.  This system now has around 48 tilapias and some of them have become bigger than the others. So i decided to move 10 of the big ones to my second system.

 Catching them in the small fishing net was a little tricky, since the fish had become bigger then the net i had with me. So i had to get a bigger net. In the aquarium store i noticed lots of big fishing nets like the size of an A3 poster. I always wondered who would buy such big nets .... well ... i am well on the way to getting one soon :)

Some of my tilapias have become 8 inch long, another eight months they should be plate size or at least  0.75Kg to 1Kg each.

Here is a short video of how i moved the tilapias.