I'm in Western Canada and this is my living room aquaponic setup with a living wall.
I designed and 3D printed the basket holders filled with hydroton clay balls. It has a standard aquarium air pump set up with a check valve and siphon out of the tank to pump to up to a manifold above the top row. The manifold lets me adjust the drip for each column. The right-hand side is a mix of succulents and aloe plants which has a fairly slow drip. The bottom row is mostly newer plants that are being rescued from a countertop pod garden when they've gotten too big and root bound. The light is a crappy cheap amazon grow light. It will probably be the first thing I upgrade.
As for the aquarium, the plants keep the nitrate level to about 5ppm. The red platys in the tank are happy and multiplying like crazy (4 born in the last 2 months). It's to the point I am going to re-home them and I bought a 2nd 50ga tank to avoid overstocking.
After about 4 months, I now clean the tank about once a month just to get the junk out of the substrate and bring the water level back up.
That is clean looking work, if you are looking for a decently affordable light solution, I would look into rapid LED they are who I bought my LED light fixture from for my reef tank. I looked at their website just before posting this they have a few small scale horticulture lights fixtures sub 200$(I cant tell if its USD or CAD, one of their light pars is 109$ right now - not a paid ad just happy with my previous experiences). Or if you are adventurous they have a DIY section, with the 3D printing this might be more of your section. This making me crave to set up my home built DIY setup, 4 levels with ~76 places to plant in 2 inch nets(nutrient film), 40 gallon breeder. Lights got destroyed in the most recent move and no play to set up that kind of humidity(Yet...).
Side note:
Does anyone have experience with the current hobby fish breeding/selling market. I came into the possession of a pet land fish wall that is a future set up, 50-ish 10 gallon tanks and 20-ish bigger ones(first need to pour concrete). I am trying to determine the most profitable, in terms of success rate and ability to reliably sell. Was pondering breeding hobby aquarium fish for resale(instead of aquaculture meat fish), if anyone had thoughts or recent market experience that would be valuable info.
Back to main note:
One last addition if you are needing more vegetation to clean nitrates when fish increase(bad horny fish or good I guess!). Look into aquatic plants, in the area I just moved from they were so hard to come by. It would also give you wiggle room when you harvest the upper plants so you always have some photosynthesis going on. Thanks for sharing, now must research how to convince friends to come do free/beer labour pour a concrete pad haha
Thanks! The light definitely needs an upgrade. I have a planted tank that's larger but this is my kid's. I've thought maybe I'd avoid a planted tank here just due to the logic that if they're soaking up all the nitrates maybe there wouldn't be enough available for the aquaponic system but maybe that logic is flawed?
I would say it depends if you are harvesting a bunch from the plants above. I would say if you are havesting lots of biomass, consentenlty changing the amount of plant absorbsion up top. I would use in tank plants as a buffer, but this could be an overly causus stratagy.