The basic designs I cover here are either continuous flow, or flood and drain. Though the continuous flow systems can be adapted to become flood and drain by the use of timers and or level switches or auto syphons.

 

For the purposes of having an aesthetic system on your back patio or in your garden, with a dozen or two specimen fish and a few marron, a design similar to these below would be perfect. In my single bed continuous flow system I have almost 50 fish with many of them around one kilogram in weight, but this is a little excessive for my grow bed and I'll have to remove some fish soon. Just as soon as I decide what to do with them, bbq, baked, steamed or fried, so many choices.

Single bed continuous flow		Multiple beds continuous flow
A single bed system in a courtyard		A compact design for growing a wide variety of aquatic species

A system similar to these designs can be extremely cheap to make especially if your using whatever materials you can scrounge. With a little imagination there are many variations on designs which can be made to suit your purpose and/or hip pocket.

The diagram below illustrates the basic concepts of water flow in a flood and drain system.

This is a fairly straightforward diagram of a flood and drain system, working on the principal that the system will have two pumps. The number of beds can vary depending on your needs and available space

The system plans below are for the more seriously minded aquaponicer, these are flood and drain systems. To the left is the system I have in my backyard at the moment, the picture on the right is a plan I'm working on for the future, designed to fit inside a standard tunnel greenhouse with 8 metre span and 25 metres long.

Four bed flood and drain system.		Five nodes in standard tunnel greenhouse size.
This is a design for a small commercial system that can be operated by one person.

From these diagrams you can see that because systems are small and recirculating, you can easily adapt to whatever space you have available. Many, many designs are possible and in my book I have plans for a number of different designs.