Richard bray

The Basic Components
Regardless of which system you decide to build, each aquaponic setup will have eight main components:

• Fish Tank
• Grow Bed
• Biological Filter
• Solids Filter
• Water
• Plumbing
• Fish
• Plants

20

Fish Tank
Fish tanks will have a similar design in all aquaponic systems. The only difference will be that large systems have large fish tanks, and smaller systems have smaller fish tanks.
A tank should value depth over diameter to help maintain consistent Water temperatures. Deep, slimmer tanks lose or absorb less heat than shallow, wide tanks. However, the degree to which you value depth :ver diameter will depend on your fish selection.
Grow Bed
Grow beds are the most variable component in aquaponic systems, and they are generally what divides and defines the different systems. The grow bed is the part of the system that supports plant growth.
21
Media-filled grow beds are just that; grow beds full of media. These beds will be full of gravel, river rock, clay pebbles, lava rock, or custom media mixtures. Media helps to support taller plants, but the primary use of media is as a biological surface area. Pebbles and rocks give bacteria plenty of places to live and reproduce, which helps the bacteria filter waste from the water.
Pansim/Sh u tterstock. com
Deep-water culture (DWC) systems have beds without grow media, but may support plants in pots that are filled with media. These
systems have less surface area for bacteria in the grow beds, but make up for it with the addition of a biological filter.
22
Hybrid systems are also defined by their grow bed design. Nutrient- film technique (NFT) beds are constructed with long rows of large PVC pipe with a thin film of water flowing through the bottom.
A-frames or towers are a way to organize NFT pipes to take advantage of vertical growing space. Dutch buckets mix the concept of a media bed with traditional drip irrigation, and drip nutrient-rich water into
buckets full of grow media, which is then drained back out into the fish
The purpose for your aquaponic system will help you determine which grow bed will work best for you. In general, the best hobby systems are simple stacked media beds or basic DWC designs with IBC totes.