Hi All,
Well I'm getting more and more excited about starting an aquaponics system. I'm still in the research phase and hope to get something up and running in 2011. In the process I ran across Dr Wilson Lennard. Dr Lennard is an Australian scientist with a PhD in Applied Biology. He has studied and installed commercial aquaponics systems around the world.
His website is www.aquaponic.com.au
There I found two great tools for designing your system, the first is a pdf document explaining how and why to use the second tool - an excel spreadsheet that you can use to size your system.
Aquaponic media bed sizing model explanation - imperial.pdf
Aquaponic media bed sizing - imperial.xls
Most of the time you get a handy 'rule of thumb' for sizing and growbed to fish ratios, which can work well, but this is a very nice check to balance your information. For instance Murry Hallam's quick guide is if you have a 1,000 liter fish tank a good starting point is 1,000 liters of growbed. He also stated fish densities of 20 kg / 1,000 liters as ideal. Murry posted an excellent reference for us beginners on his website: http://aquaponics.net.au/blog/archives/1252 titled "How to get started in Aquaponics – Rules-of-Thumb"
Replies
This is a great reference, I hadn't seen it before. I really appreciate how he is using the science of input/output (and that it's simple!) instead of the general rules of thumb with no explanations (the 1:2 ratios) you seem to see everywhere else... I'd like to see these added to the resources on the main aquaponics page. Thanks for sharing Liz.
P.S. If you're looking to use IBCs, they have them (food grade) at the Stock shop for $125, since a lot of us have to go there (or somewhere) to get chicken feed anyway, it could save you a trip. Beats driving around finding people on Craig's List that live a long way away. If you ask, they may even give you a discount if you're buying several.
Yes! I was very excited to finally hear someone was using real data. :) I'll see about getting it posted on the main page, might take some time until we can figure out the website management which is in flux at the moment...
Thanks for the tip about Stock Shop - I'll definately keep them in mind as we lay out the system!