Quote Originally Posted by Oliver

Once the fish reached the three pounds per gallon of fish tank water, I again noticed a sensitivity in the balance. More DO was added and it again settled back down. At this point there is not much, short of adding pure oxygen to the water, that I can do to keep the system stable if I increase the poundage of fish; for the DO is currently between 6 and 7 ppm. So, I have concluded, as have others, that the three pound per gallon of water, given the volume of grow beds I currently have in the system, is a maximum. This is where I came up with the number of 3.3 pounds of fish per gallon of grow bed capacity. The reason for the 3.3 pounds is because we only have five grow beds (due to space limitations) when ideally we should have six, so I have calculated the ratio to show our actual grow bed to fish density ratio. If I increase the number of grow beds (which will require a redesign of the system) then it should be possible to up the number of fish. But this will compromise the idea behind this series of posts, which is to tell how to build a simple Aquaponics system that will produce food without pushing the limits of Aquaponics design. I want people who are new to Aquaponics and are building and operating their first system to be successful.

Oliver
Oliver, did you really mean to say 3 pounds of fish per gallon? Or is that an inversion and did you really mean one pound of fish per 3 gallons? Earlier on you said 1 pound per 3 gallons of fish tank which I suppose might be ok with very forgiving fish like tilapia but when some one quoted this little section to me well my eyes kinda bugged out. Please tell me that the numbers just got a bit inverted here and you really meant 1 pound of fish per 3 gallons of water.