3 Easiest DIY Aquaponic Systems Builds

[@NellyLopez-kb9ku]

You have a knack for captivating your audience. Keep them coming back for more!

[@RobsAquaponics]

Thanks Nelly. I'm glad you enjoy them. Cheers & have a great one.😁

[@monkeypuzzlefarm]

Thanks so much for this. I have recently taken down my original system due to a house move and planning on doing a much larger and more complicated system and you have just made it a lot easier! You have taught me so much over the past few years. Thank you!

[@RobsAquaponics]

I'm glad the vid's have helped some James. Have fun with the build when the time comes mate. 👍

[@dna3930]

Because of your videos and watching other aquaponic growers, I've been growing a year now. I made my system from old swimming pool pump and pool liner for plant growing trough, have three, 55 gallon barrels I got for free, paid 75. USD for 3000 gallon pond fish aeration pump, paid 60. USD for 275 gallon IBC cube. 50. USD for wood to make plant trough, then about 100. USD for PVC pipe. Total with everything I spent less than 350. USD to build. Using 6 goldfish to learn how fish respond before buying fish to grow for food. I don't really use any growing medium, the roots sit ing direct water. I'm growing tomatoes and peppers right now, will add more later.

[@RobsAquaponics]

Nice one DNA39. 👍

[@RobsAquaponics]

Learn about Aquaponics 🐟 🍓🍅 with my "Backyard Aquaponics for Beginners" Guide for only US$19.95. You can see the guide in action on my website, ► www.bitsouttheback.com/aquaponics-guide Or, buy directly here, ► bit.ly/AquaponicsBeginnersGuide Don't forget to click the subscribe button if you enjoyed the video, bit.ly/Subscribe2Rob & share the clip around if you think it may help others too.👍 Cheers all & have a top one. 🐟 🌱🍅 Rob

[@That_Chemist]

I totally one to make one of these

[@kawaiisenshi2401]

This is the first time this has made sense to me ty!!!

[@montezdevine-james505]

Thanks for the concise information.

[@RobsAquaponics]

Glad it was helpful!

[@SandStoneofArabia]

can you make a single loop system were the water goes from the sump to the beds to the fish tank to the filter and back to the sump

[@momentiummonroe1475]

So Im doing a small system with repurposed hydroponics equipment. I've got a 40 gallon fish tank under my flood tray with 2 5" koi fish in it along with some rocks and other pondscaping stuff. There's a 250 gallon per hour sump pump that's pumping the water from the fish tank to a modified 7 gallon square container on a shelf that's maybe 6" taller than the fish tank. The pumps output pipe has a 1/4" air hose with a one way check valve inline to a small air pump, Injecting oxygen into the line and propelling the water up faster like with an airlift pump. The container has a piece of pond liner splitting the space into two. I then added an overflow pipe to the liner and made the pump plumb into the lowest part of one of the chambers. The chamber that's being plumbed into has three grades of pond filter media cut to fit the space, the media progressivly get's finer as the water increases to the over flow that leads into the next chamber. The next chamber is farly empty except for two important things. An over flow that leads back into the fishtank and a sump pump. I think the pump in there is almost 1000 gph. That pump pumps to a 3x6 grass roots raised bed exactly 2 min a day. That raised bed is on a flood tray. The flood tray is suspended 15" off the ground by a full channel unistrut... table bassically. This is where things get a little diffrent. The table has a 1" ABS pipe that it drains into, that pipe follows the walls of the grow space to a designated place outside of it. So i added a T to the drainline and two valves one to the drain line after the fish tank and one leading into it. I have a few reasons for doing this. 1. Automation: The fish tank has a float valve so i don't have to fill it, my water changes happen based on what possition the two valves are in that lead off of the flood tray. 2. Contamination: If my fish get sick i may need to treat them and that means the water needs to be deposited without coming into contact with the soil, simply unpluging the irrigation line and running it in the drain while i place the fish into quarrentine and clean the tank and filters work well. Additionally: Fish waste does not have everything plants need to become strong and robust. There are other firtilizers and minerals plants require and the run off after using these firtilizers can kill fish so being able to drain that runn off and switch back to a recirculating system after a week or so is very usefull for reamending your soils and even lite tilling. 3. Renewablility: Although fish waste does not have all the essential things that plants need it does cut the cost of fertilizer signifigantly while incorporating benificial microbes into the soil food web. I find a bit of limestone, gypsium, fish bone meal and biodynamic compost every cycle keeps everything fairly robust. Kelp meal is also used rarely, but i have incorporated it. Also epsum salts. I left alot of the other stuff out, but this is generally the way I'm growing aquaponically and i'd recommend somthing like this. PH is not a real issue, Fish food is cheap, it's organic and sustainable, you get pet fish and learn a thing or two. I like mine over the flood and drain stuff.

[@j.m.k.3406]

Always good to see the idea of self reliance Rob. Thanks from SW INDIANA

[@RobsAquaponics]

Cheers mate. 👍

[@MissBlissKris]

Is there a reason you can't use a bio-substrate in the fish habitat, thus avoiding having to remove solids? My 40 gallon aquarium uses bio substrate, and I only have to change the water twice a year, and I change the tiny filter every other month. Now that the tank is established I hardly siphon solid waste at all. I just wonder if this would work scaled up to make the aquaponics process more hands-off. I am very new to the concept, though, and only just trying to figure out all the possible setups. I'm keen to do one where the hydroponics tubes are above the fish pond, to save space. If the pond had a bio substrate, couldn't I skip the solids collection stage and pump clean water directly into the hydroponics tubes? Thanks for your help!

[@RobsAquaponics]

Hey Kristina. The biggest issue is how hard it would be to clean the substrate at the base of a tall tank. The issue with the solids is that they can coat the roots of the plants causing growth issues. It's not really an issue in media beds as the biota/compost worms in there will eventually break them down. It's more an issue in NFT & DWC set ups where the roots are suspended in the water with no media. I hope that helps some & sorry for taking a while to respond.

[@oscarhearnden4799]

​@RobsAquaponics Excellent video mate and great answers aswell. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

[@matthewwebb9137]

Hi Rob, When thinking about different systems, I've often thought the addition of a water tower would be an interesting component as it would take a bit of pressure off the pump, requiring you to only worry about head height, and then from the water tower you could install a manifold to run however many loops you like (potentially). I haven't seen anyone else play with that idea, perhaps it just unnecessary, but I wondered what you thought of something like that?

[@insAneTunA]

I have a water tower for exactly that purpose. 🙂

[@RobsAquaponics]

There are a few folks I know of that are running systems like this. 👍It would require decent footings for the distribution tank & enough available height which is why I haven't played with the idea as of yet. I prefer to talk about things I have experience with directly. Are you looking at building yourself?

[@matthewwebb9137]

@@RobsAquaponics Oh yeah that makes sense. Do you know anyone with videos? For the longest time I just assumed it was a bad idea because I didn't see anyone doing it. But I see how those infrastructure issues could be a limiting factor. I was going to build one but when the pandemic hit pvc costs went up 10x so it became too expensive for me. I had a small 3 tier shelf system in the basement with guppies in order to play with concepts. I'm going to bring that back soon and use it to run a microgreen/seedling operation.

[@matthewwebb9137]

@@insAneTunA That's awesome! what did you use to build your water tower?

[@insAneTunA]

@@RobsAquaponics I can tell you what I did. I made a wooden rack. And at about 1.8 meter I installed a relative small standard pond filter but I removed all the internal filtration elements. So basically it is just an empty bin but with all the standard connections for the pipes. And I pump the water from my sump tank into that bin and from there gravity feeds my 4 growbeds. As long as I don't pump ridiculous amounts of water it can easily feed my 4 growbeds with water. If I pump too much water it can theoretically overflow that bin. But I don't even come near those amounts of water. I made it in such way that all the growbeds always get an equal amount of water. Basically the gravity fed water pipe that runs from my "water tower" to the water outlets for the growbeds, is situated in a lower position as all the outlets for the growbeds. So as long as everything is perfectly level each outlet gets an equal amount of water. But to be sure and to be able to tweak it I also installed a ball valve at each individual outlet. But I never really needed to use those valves because I have a variable pump, and I can regulate the amount of water that goes to my "water tower". My pump is the AquaForte DM-10000 Vario. It is much more efficient and it uses a lot less power as a regular water pump. They are sold in different sizes and capacity. At max capacity my pump can pump 10.000 liter per hour. It has a display which can also show the wattage that the pump is using at that moment. My pump is using only 40 watt, all year long. But I also use the pump to feed another filter that is situated at a lower level from my water tower. At max capacity it would use around 80 watt. It has an automatic shutoff if for some reason all the water has drained from your sump tank. It also has a pause button, so you don't have to unplug the pump if you want to do some maintenance or clean some filters. And when you start it up again it goes back to your last used setting, and it has a slow start so that you do not get too much pressure at startup. And you can install it in a dry and wet situation, as long as it is installed below the water line. I have it for several years now, around 6 or 7 years or so, and I never had any issues with it. It looks small, but it is a lot more powerful as all my previous pumps, while it is using a lot less power as all my previous pumps. Which was an important factor for me when I bought the pump. My only regret is that I didn't buy the one size bigger pump, because now I know that I could have set it at the lowest setting and that would have used even less power compared to the pump that I have now. And I used a too large diameter pipe, which they didn't specify at the moment that I bought the pump. Now they specify what size pipe you must use. But it is not really an issue. I also made a drain with a valve in that water tower bin, so that when needed I can clean the bin and drain all the heavy solids from the bottom of the bin. Usually I clean it once or twice a year. But at least once a year at every start of the season. It also prevents fast clogging of the growbeds. I don't want too much sand or too large bio mass particles inside my growbeds. And because I use gravity I only need a single pump for my entire system, which makes things a lot less complicated, and much more fail proof. That's because I don't have to worry about different flow rates from different pumps, or that one pump fails for whatever reason while the other pump keeps pumping. And not a single pipe or valve is under pressure, so that automatically eliminates other possible failures. Having a "water tower" was the most practical and economical option for me. Otherwise I would have needed to use 2 different pumps to make my system work. And here in the Netherlands electricity is very expensive. Right now 1kWh costs a little more than 1 Euro or US dollar. But before the illegal Russian war it was around 0,30 cents per kWh. Which was still not very cheap.

[@brianbarnett1380]

First winter with my system and oboy lol all good but had to figure some things out love the info rob

[@RobsAquaponics]

Hope they continue to do well through the cold mate. Cheers Brian.

[@EddieAuibeb-im2qu]

❤ I love it !!! It help me to build Fish pond....it was eyes opening

[@daughterofthemosthighgod863]

What kind of pump you use for a single loop aquaponics system please?

[@AndNoOneDriving]

what is the difference of letting the grow bed act as the bio filter itself as opposed to having a different biofilter structure in the sump tank? is a solids capturing device not usually enough to keep water clean enough to deliver to the plants directly? thank you so much for this video!

[@RobsAquaponics]

I see biofilters as a bit of an extra backup. Not needed if you have enough media in the system to hose the bacteria required to process the ammonia load generated by the fish. The biofilter converts ammonia dissolved in the water where as the solids filter is collecting solids. Hope that helps some.

[@warren7565]

Thanks Rob. Do sand grow beds use flood and drain? And dual root zone do they flood and drain too?

[@RobsAquaponics]

A proper iAVs system runs on a timer that floods & drains the beds. 👍 I'm currently working on another video shot at Owen's place that is just looking at the sand bed side of the system there. Hope to have it out in a week or two. I ran my DRZ in a shallow layer of water & had sand in the base to wick the water up to the soil. I have seen others flood up to just below the soil layer & drain it out like a normal flood & drain bed. I'm not sure which would work best to tell you the truth.

[@NorthernCapeGrower]

thank you for the information.

[@Bleepbleepblorbus]

Is there version that endlessly condenses water vapor like a terrarium? You know I feel like that'd use less water

[@RobsAquaponics]

Not that I've seen. Aquaponics, like hydroponics, uses a fraction of conventional growing & am not sure how it could be improved on further for a basic backyard build. Always open to new suggestions & ideas though.

[@chrispeguero2404]

So I just started my my fish hooked up to the grow bed everything is brand new do I add bacteria to the fish tank or let the fish do it itself I do have some plants 3 8nchs long and some seeds sprouting

[@RobsAquaponics]

This video goes through how you can feed naturally occurring bacteria to set up a nitrogen cycle in the system Chris, How to Cycle An Aquaponics System kzbin.info/www/bejne/oZ7bl3yVm9CgqsU

[@RobsAquaponics]

Hope that helps mate.

[@morneschaap2944]

Won't the mixing of the water in the 3 loop system dilute the nutrients available with the tank and the growbeds draining into one place?

[@RobsAquaponics]

The nutrients rich water is split between both so will eventually make it to the plant side. I've run my systems this way for years with no issues that I can see with plumbing them like this.

[@suroyoverdrive]

Is mechanical filter not necessary if there's a radial flow settler?

[@RobsAquaponics]

It depends on the system I think SO. If you're running only DWC or NFT it might pay to place a mechanical fines filter after the RFS to prevent fine solids building up in the beds or on the roots of the plants.

[@jayhanson2224]

In a basic setup, single loop, and double loop there is always a water tank under the grow bed, is that a necessity?

[@RobsAquaponics]

Sump tanks help to make sure that the fish tank always has a constant height of water & never gets drained. You can pump straight from the fish tank if you like, I prefer not to.

[@aunizahra8475]

hi, can I know what apps that u used to design the model?

[@RobsAquaponics]

I do it the old school way & make my own using Paint.net ( www.getpaint.net/ ) for the images then animate using DaVinci Resolve video editing software I use to produce the videos.

[@wasimhassankhan07]

Nice explanation, hopefully I will be able to build a system one day based on your details 👍 Thanks for sharing 😊

[@RobsAquaponics]

No problem 👍 Hope the build goes smoothly when the time comes.

[@rhysmurch2479]

Thanks man, very informative

[@RobsAquaponics]

Glad it was helpful!

[@imnutrak130]

unsure how much time and effort (and or money to hire and explain to a designer) those animations took, but those are the best for visual learners like myself! Thanks!

[@RobsAquaponics]

Thanks 😁 I made them all myself using getpaint.net & Davinci Resolve editor (also a free version available) to make them.

[@alexk3199]

If I've got 1sq acre pond can I do aquaponics at that lager scale and what are the cons

[@RobsAquaponics]

It wouldn't work too well Alex. The fish load would be fairly low meaning that there wouldn't be a lot of nutrients for the plants. I have seen folks try but the veg always look fairly sad.

[@kiddkai]

Can the fish poop goes to the plant area without filtering?

[@RobsAquaponics]

It can do but you will need to manually clean it out of the media when it builds up or it can cause health issues with the fish.

[@jesslovely5365]

What happens if the fish poo goes directly into the plant pool?

[@RobsAquaponics]

It will be broken down over time & any that can be will be consumed by bacteria & taken up by the plants. The problem occurs when too many solid collect in the bed & create anaerobic zones. There can be a danger to both the fish & health of the plants.

[@Fabian_Peru]

Interesante diseño pondré en práctica. Gracias

[@RobsAquaponics]

Me alegro que te haya ayudado Fabián. (Google Translate)

[@variadasideias]

quero fazer um video desse para a apresentação da faculdade qual programa voce usa?

[@meeeek]

The easiest way is to have a very healthy fish tank, hang some pots into the tank, grow plants. Also airstones are not really a good way to oxygenate water. Some surface movement from a filter and exposure to air will be much more effective and unwanted effects.

[@edengardeningtowers4923]

So I tried this set up and I ended up creating my own system with a tower with light instead. The fish sit in their tank and I set up the tower on my porch with a 400w florescent grow light. The tank pumps into the filter then I to the tower to the spawn tank back to the main tank😊

[@RobsAquaponics]

Nice one mate. 👍 I've seen loads of different ways folks set them up & grow successfully. Have a top one mate.

[@Toskyval]

But wait a sec, how the water level in the fish tank stay "high" enough to keep flowing water into the grow beds during the phase of "charging" that preceed the "discharging" phase? I mean, there's a window of time between those two phases where the fish tank will not receive back any water from the sunk tank since the grow beds are still charging up, and for that same reason the water in the fish tank would become low enough it couldn't "escape out" so the grow beds will stop receving enough water to reach the discharging phase. How do you tackle that aspect?

[@RobsAquaponics]

That is covered in the full video. 😉 The link below will take you to that position. kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZoK0cmh4pbx-m8U Cheers.

[@gauthierolivier8993]

Hello Rob =) , great video! a real success! Nevertheless I would like to know the design application of aquaponic designs without wanting to disturb you in your work! Because I'm thinking about a small family project

[@RobsAquaponics]

Hi Gauthier. Sorry I missed your comment. This playlist may help with some of the information you need, kzbin.info/aero/PLBcWprMIwYYj8zCdbSzPJOR3HRXpxuBwf & I also have an online guide available for purchase as well if that interests you, bit.ly/AquaponicsBeginnersGuide Cheers & all the best with your build when the time comes mate. 👍

[@Playwithstyle28]

Where is overflow pipe

[@RobsAquaponics]

From the fish tank?

[@skolauprirodi]

Why i dont use chicken crap insted fish crap?

[@RobsAquaponics]

Disease issue primarally. Fish disease doesn't pass on to humans where bird ones can. 👍 If you compost the fish waste first you could use that in a bioponics style system.

[@aliterashkar6264]

Great❤❤❤

[@DrKrapulax]

Are there any benefits to a dual loop system? I see none. In fact it seems less efficient and unnecessarily overcomplicated. The core idea of aquaponics is that the plants filter the water for the fish. Why would I recycle half-filtered water to the plants and half-shitty water to the fish??? Why would I use a biological filter to extract material my plants could use to grow?

[@Ataume]

Wondering the same thing.

[@RobsAquaponics]

All my systems you've seen on the channel have been split flow. The "shitty water" is filtered by settler & in the case of this example a fines/bio filter. If you run media grow beds then you have a biofilter. 😉 The bio filter converts the ammonia to nitrate & folks that run straight DWC or NFT need one to do that job for them. You can separate the bed side & run it as an aquaculture system if need be. You can expand by adding extra beds & increase pump to provide a great flow rate. Watching the full video might help some & the link below will take you to the split flow section of the video, kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZoK0cmh4pbx-m8U

[@DrKrapulax]

@@RobsAquaponics Thank you for your answer!

[@drrahilakurdi5943]

💚💚

[@RobsAquaponics]

👍👍🙏

[@mitchellkrouth5083]

Thank you important to show flow system simplify so you can visualize a management program. It seems a little complicated, but it should be as simple as taking care of the fish tank.

[@RobsAquaponics]

It's rather easy once you get your noggin around the water flow & how that helps the different parts of the system thrive.👍👍 Cheers Mitchell.

[@insAneTunA]

👍

[@RobsAquaponics]

😁👍

[@bialpxy4456]

I just put vegetables in my aquarium

[@BobbyAguilar-o1l]

🎉🎉🎉😂❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

[@bearleemadeit4718]

First comment…?

[@RobsAquaponics]

Apparently so 😉👍

[@mirriulahwaterdog]

Give him a medal.

[@Sparky_D]

🤦‍♂️