Aquaponics System Update and Video

Aquaponics System Update July 2023

This aquaponics system in Costa Rica has been running for about 8 years and produced lots of tasty fish, veggies and herbs. This July, we changed out 4 of the wooden grow beds for the plastic beds seen in the video. They’re the only off the shelf grow bed we could find in Costa Rica. (They’re actually livestock water tanks). We kept one of the wooden beds in the middle to raise water hyacinth for the ducks and chickens and serve as a nursery for river prawns.

In addition we’ve switched one fish tank to exclusively Swai (Pangasius hypophthalmus).

How Our Aquaponics System Works

Our aquaponics system is powered by a single Jebao pump, which consumes only 120 watts of electricity. We designed the system to use gravity and auto-siphons to do the majority of the work, and all of the water is recycled.

The plants grow in rock-filled grow beds that drain and fill every 15 minutes. There is no soil involved, and the rock beds act as biofilters. They not only remove solid waste, but the bacteria living on the surface of the wet rock also convert ammonia from the fish waste into nitrates that the plants can use.

In other words, the fish waste provides nutrients for the plants, and the plants help to clean the water for the fish. It is a closed-loop system that is both efficient and sustainable

Due to it’s totally custom nature, we’ve had to make some adjustments and changes in process. It was built without plans and based on concepts and ideas gathered from many hours/days on Google, YouTube and various aquaponics forums. I’ll have to give a shout out to Murray Hallam in Australia for giving us ideas and concepts and the UN FAO Aquaponics Food Production manual.

Swapped Tilapia For River Sharks

We also just changed one of the fish tanks to Swai(Pangasius hypophthalmus) instead of Tilapia. They’re also known as “Tiburon del Rio” or “River Sharks”, but they’re essentially a large breed of catfish from Vietnam. The tilapia are still doing great in the other tank and breeding as well. We’re hoping the Swai breed and we can completely move from Tilapia. They make large tasty filets and are now approaching 2 feet in length!

Swai are a popular fish for aquaponics because they are fast-growing, hardy, and tolerant of a wide range of water conditions. They are also relatively inexpensive, making them a good option for aquaponics operations. Their fillets are large and meaty, with a mild flavor that is similar to cod or whitefish. They have a much cleaner taste when compared to Tilapia.

Aquaponics Mods

Besides changing the plant grow beds and fish species, one necessary mod was the addition of 55 gallon drum sedimentation tanks. These reduce amount of solids being deposited into the rock grow beds. Being an outside aquaponics system, lot of debris and plant matter gets blown into the tanks.(many systems are built inside of greenhouses) These tanks cut down the amount of solids drastically. We also ran a ‘clean out’ valve from the bottom of the tanks to a PVC pipe running to our gardens below. No more fertilizer needed!

Over all the system has been great and I think we can call it complete…….but there’s always room for mods!