Aquaponics--the set up.

This blog covers the build of the system.  The greenhouse kit came with three styles of benches, a 30 inch deep soil bench, a regular shelf bench and then an 18 deep soil bench.  I would be converting the two deep soil benches into a fish tank and a plant grow bed.  I had so much fun looking at all of the PVC piping and figuring out my design. Here are the two deep soil benches, aka fish tank on the left and plant grow bed on the right.  The fish tank dimensions are 83 in x 33 in x 29.5 inches.  The plant grow bed dimensions are 94.5 in x 33 in x 14 inches.



This is the plant grow bed.  The bottom is made up of 2x4 cedar boards.  I added a few extra boards of pine as the amount of cedar boards sent with the kit was not making a flush bottom.


This is the fish tank.  The bottom of this is the brick paving which comprises the flooring of the greenhouse.




I used felt pond liners for the bottom of each of the beds.  The liners were Beckett UL612 Pond Underlayment. I doubled the liner for the fish tank and even lined most of the sides of it.

plant grow bed above and fish tank below

Next was adding the pond liners to the beds.  The liners were Aquascape PRO Grade EDPM 45 mil.  I cut liners to fit the inside of the bed.  This is the plant grow bed.  I used stainless steel staples to attach the liner to the sides of the bed.  The liners were heavy and difficult to adjust, but I eventually managed to get them placed correctly.

Here is the plant grow bed with the pvc plumbing system being organized.  I improvised using stainless steel sink drain covers as covers for the intakes of the systems.  

Here is the finished plumbing design (minus the pump).  The fish tank plumbing system is identical to the plant grow bed.  I used 1" pvc tubing for this design.  The three intake areas use  3/4" wide pvc as this was what the drain cover fit on.

Here is the plant grow bed with the expanded clay pellets in place.  I used 12 bags of ECP to fill the beds up to get the proper 12 inches of medium based on the literature.

Here is a down shot of the fish tank.  I started to partially fill the tank.  I bought water lettuce plants which float on top and can be used as aids to clean the fish tank water up.  (I have since moved them to my outside pond which needs them more.)  The pumps I used are submersible magnetic pumps MD9 Pump MagDrv 115V  1 PH 60 Hz  950 GPH purchased from Pentair.

Here are the vertical grow bed towers being made.  I used 1.5 inch pvc double wyes to create these vertical grow towers.  

Here they are finished with water running through them.  I used stainless steel sink drains for the bottoms to prevent the ECPs from escaping.  The drains are the only metal in the system as metal is not good to have in the system as it can leech chemicals into the water, which can mess things up and/or harm your fish.

Here is the final set up ready to go.  As you can see, there is water in the fish tank and by the height of the clay pellets, water is in the plant grow bed as well.  All systems are set to go.  

This is the trellis that I made for the plant grow bed.  The trellis had to be made of a floating material, no metal, as the plant grow bed water volume changes slightly which means it rises and falls periodically.  Any plants growing on an attached trellis might get ripped out by their roots if water shrank too much.  I used a twine to weave the netting part--took me many days/hours to weave. 

I will cover the trials and tribulations of getting everything to run smoothly in another blog entry.