DIY Urban Bathtub Aquaponics System

DIY urban bathtub aquaponics system

 

Aquaponics System is almost the most perfect closed-loop Food and fish producing system .

This Aquaponics system is made to provide its owner with A healthy organic vegetables and delicious clean fresh fish during the whole year long. Getting an aquaponics system set up, however, can be costly. There’s lots of systems to choose from for doing the same job but this one is the most cost effective.

This aquaponics system plan could be beautiful and economical idea if it is built and maintained the right way and has been given the needed care. And this will begins with a bathtub

 

The theory and principals of aquaponics are amazing and I am a big fan of them, but it depends on the design and maintenance, And how to make your aquaponics system beautiful and funky,  also functional and affordable at the same time.

After doing a deep research we have reached to the needed system that we have in our mind, we have found examples of aquaponics system that gives the place a beauty and charming and at the same time produce fresh fish and vegetables effectively.

Not only that but this mission can be done using mostly cheap recycled materials.

 

Aquaponics system completely of recycled materials

 

Having an aquaponics system made from recycled materials is a very attractive idea, also very cost effective and money saving, all aquaponics people now take the easy way of building aquaponics system that is made of metal and plastic and all the other small bits.

But we are going to make our funky and full functioning aquaponics system using recycling stuff

 

This small bathtub aquaponics system will be a good example for a productive educational system and permaculture learners and the community garden.

Breaking the ground for aquaponics sytem setting

This is a simple aquaponics system made of a bathtub that represents the fish tank and a grow bed connected to it, this grow bed will carry the plants.

 

A few small tubes will be used to connect both of them, also a water pump will be used to pump the water slowly from the fish pond to the grow bed.

The water cycle begins in the grow bed when it is fully loaded with water that contains natural nutrients of nitrates that coming originally from the fish wastes, when that happens there is auto siphon it responds to this by making a vacuum that withdraw water from the grow bed and pour it into the fish pond.

When the water level in the grow bed that gives the plants roots space to breathe oxygen, this process cleans the water too from the fish wastes as the veggies consumes them as nutrients

Then the water pumped again from the fish bathtub to the grow bed using some type of water pump with horse power suitable to the system size you have, also you can have aerator to the fish pond water or you can depend on the oxygen gradient pressure that helps the water to be oxygenated through the water surface contact with air.

This cycle repeats all the time giving the system its uniqueness and efficient productivity.

 

The rocks that receives the water helps in aerating and oxygenating the water  when the water bounce on the rocks,

 

Getting there…

In this aquaponics system the fish in the fishpond water where they are living and excreting their waste “NH4OH”  Ammonia, this nutrient rich water is pumped then to the vegetables grow bed using water pump, in this stage the fish excreta “Ammonia” transferred by naturally occurring bacteria into nitrites” NO2″ then into Nitrates “NO3″ which a very valuable plants nutrients, this nutrients are absorbed by the plants roots giving you fresh totally organic vegetables, also in this process  a good amount of oxygen is released into the growbed water when the water reaches a high levels the siphon sucks the clean water back to the fish tank which is the bathtub in this aquaponics system, this water now have a very low amount of fish waste and this is on of the best advantages that Aquaponics system has over Aquaculture,Aquaponics system saves a huge amounts of water because the plants roots cleans the fish waste saturated water, giving you much longer time to change even a small part of water that might be two weeks or more while you need to change the whole water for the fish every three or four days in case of Hydroponics according to the fish density in the fish tank.

Also the specific advantage of this aquaponics system is the beauty it reflects on the place around, also this system do not need water aerator as this job is already done when the water cascading down the rocks making the oxygen are bubbles mix into the clean returning water, this whole view and mechanism gives the soul a relaxing effect specially in hot summer days

 

This amazing grow bed from above, encouraged us to ahead of schedule in planting…

The Aquaponics system takes 2 months for its parts to integrate its biology as the good bacteria begins to function at the required level and work in an integrated system with the plants bed and the fish pond and the grow bed fill with pebbles.

Then you can see the growth of your veggies which can be any of salad vegetables, Tomato, Cabbage, lettuce, Cucumber or other plants can be planted in the grow bed

Two more weeks and your veggies and fish will look great and you will have a good feeling because you feel that you have made something.

In this Aquaponics system we have taken a gentle approach with this aquaponics DIY plan to make it stable as we can in its biology and nutrition cycle

 We want happy fish and healthy plans also at the same time we have ripening food in the garden in which we made our Aquaponics project.

We have shown you how to DIY urban aquaponics system, its very easy, all what you need:

plants

fish

veggies

lovely rocks

wood