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.
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.