Can you integrate Aquaponics into Growboxes?

With all the modern interest in aquaponics, it's no surprise that you often hear people asking about how to hack a grow box for aquaponics. Not all grow kits come with this kind of functionality, so the question is very relevant for anyone who wants to start including aquaculture in their projects.

How aquaponics works in open grow areas

In most grow setups, adding aquaponics means putting fish into the reservoir. In larger open grow rooms and grow areas, the reservoir is open and accessible, and it's large enough for fish to swim around comfortably. Growers put all of the infrastructure in the reservoir that fish need, and then they rely on a biological synergy between plants and fish to enrich the reservoir water. As fish add waste products to the reservoir, theoretically, it enriches the water for plant intake.

But my grow box is different!

Closed, compact grow boxes are different and require a different approach.

The major aspect of whether you can add aquaponics to grow box involves looking at where the reservoir is located at inside the box. In most cases, since grow boxes are built to be compact and self-contained, there is no room for aquaponics systems.

What you can do is create a DIY solution to funnel reservoir water into a grow box. Now there are a couple things to be aware of here -- this may void the warranty for a product, because it's not using it the way it's supposed to be used. It can be difficult to penetrate the shell of the grow box and still keep it sealed for all of the other processes like air handling and reflective interior. But if you can do this by inserting a reservoir tube into a grow box, you can then locate your reservoir outside the grow box and pack it full of fish.

So really, the question of adding aquaponics to a grow box comes down to whether you want to stick with the manufacturer’s recommendations, or go out on a limb and do your own thing, engineering your own aquaponics setup (or buy a system that is made for aqua). Money is a critical issue here -- if you only have the baseline funds for projects, not many would advise trying to set up these DIY solutions. But if you have an older grow box and you want to play around with it, you may be able to get this functionality just by running in in/out line from the box to an auxiliary reservoir.

For much more on hydroponics and everything that goes with it, look at what manufacturers and resellers are giving today's grow community to allow much more versatile and productive systems.