I recently got into aquaponics. The thought started with using Earth Buckets and some other self water planter containers for a small veggy garden. I came across aquaponics and was intrigued at first but then just couldn't stop reading (this forum and any site I could find)

I started by building a trial 4 foot x 8 foot Deep water culture bed at my job. I have a warehouse with some unused space. The bed has not grown anything yet but I wanted to get it to cycle first. The water capacity of my bed, filter (small bio filter about 1L of ceramic bioballs), and fish holding tank is about 150 gallons. I had 20 goldfish in there for over a month and once I saw Nitrates go up and ammonia go down to a safe level, I decided to plant some lettuce. I have my lettuce on day 3 as I type this, in Oasis horticubes with no real sign of green yet but definitely sprouting action. I purchased 4 light fixtures. There are 4 bulbs in each fixture and it's 4' long. The lights are roughly 1 foot away from the water and at waterline they shine about 200-240 FC in all parts of the bed.

With my cycle complete I decided to get tilapia to stock the tank. I purchased 200 fingerlings locally thinking the bio mass would be small. Well the fingerlings ranged in size from 1-4" maybe even 5" in length. So needless to say I overstocked my tank thinking I was going to have a bunch of little babies not bigger fish haha.

I put the fingerlings in Friday during the day.

Friday water readings were.
1ppm Ammonia
3-4ppm Nitrite
20ppm Nitrate

Saturday was
2ppm Ammonia
3-4ppm Nitrite
20ppm Nitrate

Saturday I decided to enlarge their filter. I got some bulkheads, a 16 gallon tote, 3 cubic foot bags of polyester filter fiber, some arcylic panels to silicone in as water dividers, and 4 gallons of SeaChem Matrix on order to add when it comes in.

So far the filter is running with the 3 cubic foot bags of polyester fiber. I scattered the fiber into the tote and placed the acrylic panels so the water enters on the top of one side, is forced up and over a divider, and then into the polyester and ceramic media before exiting out the bottom of the other side of the tote.

I hope the bacteria on the ceramic media starts to reproduce fast and spread to the now much larger filter.

It's Sunday now and I checked my levels again and I'm now at.

4-8ppm Ammonia (test jumps to 8ppm after 4ppm and it's in between in color)
5+ppm Nitrites
20ppm Nitrates

I just hope the tilapia don't die from the ammonia before the filter increases in biological size.

I have a 55 gallon tank sitting that I was going to set up as a breeder tank for future stocks. I might start it up and spread the load out a little bit on the main system.

Does anyone have any suggestions to what I should do?

My thoughts are spread out some of the larger fish into the 55 gallon now and let nature take it's course on the other tank. If a couple must die let it be. I just don't want them all to die lol.

Ever since I got into this I just want to do more. My warehouse has a lot of space but problem is there's no natural light besides 4-5 FC through the small skylights. It would be nice to have long grow beds run through the whole place and big tanks of fish. Maybe that's what the future holds for me. We'll just have to see.

Thanks for providing a great place for a newbie to learn!

Walter