The Aquaponic Source

Now that I have finished building the greenhouse, I am turning my attention to setting up the aquaponic systems.  When I was originally doing my research I found that if you were not lucky enough to live in Australia, then you were pretty much on your own for building your system.  In Australia, there are a few well know sources to buy and install a medium to large size home system.  In the US, there seemed to be very small systems that are designed to fit on your patio or very large commercial systems.  I was interested in something in between, and I couldn't find any supplier of systems, so I was on my own.  

The most difficult thing to source is tanks and growbeds.  Most of the research on-line had indicated that people in the US have to be creative and build their own beds.  I wanted something that was going to last a long time and that would look good.  After a lot of searching, I found an on-line plastic tank manufacturer and I designed my whole system around rectilinear polypropylene tanks that they custom build for you with pre-existing molds.  The problem was the cost.  The tanks were not cheap and the shipping from California almost doubled the cost.  I was just about to suck it up when I found The Aquaponic Source.

In my research I had discovered the site and blog that Sylvia and Alan Bernstein had created, but at the time I had not seen any tanks for sale.  I had been feeling a little uneasy about the direction that I had been heading in with the plastic tanks and so I had procrastinated in placing the order.  When I re-discovered The Aquaponic Source I found that they were now selling grow-beds.  I called the support number to ask a bunch of questions and met Alan and Sylvia.

Alan is the tank-growbed-system designer and Sylvia is the Aquaponic guru.  They each spent a significant amount of time answering my newbie questions and I made some tweaks to my system design based on the things that I learned.  I ordered my growbeds from them and Alan also was able to custom supply me with some 300 gallon fish tanks as well.

The tanks and growbeds have been built and are about to be shipped to me.  Now the fun begins...