Purchasing an
aquaponics system can be a daunting and expensive venture, and,
unfortunately, there are a lot of big claims being made by other
aquaponics businesses about their systems. Before you buy a “cheaper”
aquaponics system that you may regret PLEASE ask the following
questions:
1) Is shipping and/or local delivery included?
Our systems include free shipping, and we have been palletizing and
shipping large aquaponics systems all over North America for over two
years. This insures that your aquaponics system will arrive safely and
quickly.
2) What are your Grow Beds made of?
Please
stick to UV resistant PE or HDPE only! IBC totes will fall apart in a
couple years unless they are painted, and that paint is maintained.
While wood may look nice when it is new, it breaks down quickly in
sunlight unless it is constantly maintained. Avoid lined beds! There
are far more things that can go wrong with liner in a container than a
solid, single piece that was designed to be a long-lasting grow bed.
3) Does your fish tank have smooth sides and corners, and no “feet” or “pockets” in the bottom?
Fish tanks need to have smooth sides and no “pockets” or “feet” in the
bottom. If they do, solid waste will accumulate in those spaces,
become anaerobic and ruin the ecology of your system. Avoid any
aquaponics system that features a fish tank that does not have a smooth,
ridge-less interior throughout.
4) Do you utilize sump tanks?
Avoid any aquaponics system that does not include sump tanks and has a
ratio of grow bed volume to fish tank volume that is greater than 1:1.
Why? Consider the example of a competitor’s system that has 64 cubic
feet of grow bed area and a 300 gallon fish tank. Every time the grow
beds fill, they pull approximately 200 gallons of water out of the 300
gallon tank! The calculation goes as follows: 64 cu ft of area * 7.48
gallons / cu ft = 480 gallons. Figure about 60% of that space will be
displaced by the grow media, leaving you with approximately 191 gallons
that will be pulled directly from the fish tank when the grow beds are
simultaneously full (a condition that will occasionally occur). That is
2/3 of a FULL fish tank! Imagine if some water had evaporated off –
those poor fish will be swimming on their sides, which can be very
stressful for them, and possibly fatal.We employ the time-tested CHOP
design principles – Constant Height in the fish tank, One Pump
in the sump tank – for our larger, Modular aquaponics systems. While
more expensive than sump-less systems, the extra water volume insures
that they are also far more stable and enable much more grow bed square
footage for any given-sized fish tank than systems without sumps. And
with the CHOP design, we eliminate all water-level risk to the fish.
5) Why is your system able to produce so many more fish than other media-based aquaponic systems?
Unfortunately the FCC doesn’t monitor “truth in advertising” laws on
the internet so many aquaponic systems developers grossly exaggerate how
many pounds of fish they can produce. The answer is that they cannot.
All well-designed media-based systems can produce about a pound of fish
for every 5 – 10 gallons of water per year and less than that with no
sump tanks. Raft systems with full, multi-level filtration systems can
stock more densely, but they require far more maintenance than media
based systems. Please read our blog post on Fish Stocking Densities for more information.
6) How can you claim to “feed a family of XX” when you don’t know anything about my family?This is another exaggerated claim that drives us a little crazy. Media
based aquaponic systems that are properly designed grow plants
approximately twice as fast as comparably sized soil-based gardens, and
you can place your plants approximately twice as close together. Beyond
that, we have no way of telling you how big of a system you need to buy
in order to feed your family. That depends on the size of your family,
what they like to eat, your skill at planning and growing the plants
and handling insects, the environment your system is in, the amount of
light it gets, etc., etc. Whenever you hear a claim about number of
people fed, or number of pounds of product per square foot, be sure to
probe further.
7) Can I expand this system in the future? How flexible is your design?
Our
Modular AquaBundance aquaponics systems are designed with expansion and
flexibility in mind. Only have the budget for a 4 bed system, but are
considering expanding to an 8 bed next year? No problem! You can add
what you want, when you want and without financial penalty! Plus, you
can arrange your grow beds and fish tanks anywhere in your greenhouse
you want, so long as they are higher than your sump tanks. We have also
designed our Raft Bed additions so they can go anywhere you want to
place them – they don’t need to be adjacent to a media bed. By
comparison, our competitors say things like “media beds must sit to the
left & right of the fish tank and a floating raft tank must feed off
of a media bed.” The only “must” with our design is that the sump tank
needs to be lower than the fish tank and the grow beds. That’s it!
8) What if I don’t want to pay for grow media and grow bed stands?
We could have built the cost of grow media and grow bed stands into the
cost of our aquaponics systems, but decided not to. Why? Because
we’ve found that some customers would rather put the money they would
spend on grow media into purchasing a larger system or upgrading
components and use less expensive gravel instead. Same with the grow
bed stands. Many of our customers have built the support for their grow
beds right into their greenhouses and would rather not pay for our
stands. That’s perfectly fine – we aren’t offended! Our goal is to set
you up with exactly the system that best fits your needs and budget.
Along these same lines, other optional items that you can build into
your system order are a larger or smaller fish tank, a larger pump,
lights, and light moving rails
9) How long have you been doing this? If not for very long,
why should I be confident that the system I purchase will work as
advertised?
We have been in business since November, 2009,
and have been selling the highest quality aquaponic systems to thrilled
customers since the summer of 2010. Our founder, Sylvia Bernstein, has
been designing and perfecting home-based soil-less gardening systems
since 2003. We have great number of very satisfied, large system
customers including home hobbyists; many, many schools from elementary
through college; and growers combining food production for themselves
with that for local sales.
10) What can you tell me about the company that will be supporting me and my system? We are a 10 person company (including an engineer, a master plumber,
and an aquarium expert). We focus on one thing: serving the needs of the
home and school aquaponic gardener. We operate in a 7600 sq. ft.
facility that includes a retail center, warehouse, manufacturing shop,
and R&D laboratory. We are designing and building aquaponic systems
and supporting our thousands of very satisfied customers every day. We
wrote the best-selling, award-winning book “Aquaponic Gardening”, run the Aquaponic Gardening Community,
which is the largest aquaponics forum in North America, and co-founded
the Aquaponics Association. We want to bring you into our AquaBundance
family, and view that as a long-term relationship based on trust that
starts with avoiding exaggerated sales claims and ends with a
low-maintenance, beautifully functioning aquaponics garden producing
incredible healthy food for you and your family.
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