In this article, we are going to see what you need to have for a raft culture. The essential elements to make this technique work at home in your garden are: fish, plants, bacteria and of course water!

How it works?

Concretely, there will be a polystyrene plate that floats on the water, and on this plate there will be holes where we insert pots called “baskets” in which we will put the plants, and the roots will grow directly in the water. We can put everything there: peppers, salads, vegetables… In the clay balls, they can grow even better. This is an area that would expand the cultivation area and we could put five, six square meters, even ten square meters of raft there. The water overflows from the bio filter and will irrigate this area from below and then return to the fish pond. This system works on its own, provided you feed the trout well.

The essentials to have your system at home

The first step is to have a basin of about 300 liters with a double wall and another water collector of 500 liters so as to have thermal insulation. Then we will put our fish. The thermal amplitude can vary from -10 to plus 40, we will thermally insulate it. We will also need an air pump in order to supply oxygen not only for the trout, but also for the bacteria which work from oxygen, as well as for the roots of the plants.

Also remember to have a low-power, low-consumption low-pressure pool-type water pump that sends to a pressurized particle filter with UV for water disinfection. The filter will remove suspended particles that are in the water to avoid clogging the bio filter. The water will pour into a vacuum cleaner which supplies all the stock of clay balls which contain the bacteria and which are called bio filters and which will serve as a culture surface.

Next you will need a tarp:

It is a wooden structure and thermal insulation with polystyrene about six or seven cm thick.

You will also need to have tubes and pipes to circulate the water. For 300 liters of clay balls, we revolve around one square meter of cultivation area. But on a square meter of culture surface in aquaponics, we can really have explosive cultures.

An aquarium chiller will also be needed. We can install it between the mechanical filtration and the bio filter, so as to control the temperature of the water and not exceed 26 degrees in summer, which is ideal both for fish and for the roots of plants. Indeed, they tend to catch diseases above 26 degrees.

You can then remove it from the fall, and put an aquarium resistor in the fish pond in the winter, so as to control the temperature and also the growth of the trout.

You also need to have thermometers everywhere for an aquaponics setup so as to be aware of the thermal effects.

It is also important to have a stock of clay pebbles

Having a stock of clay pebbles will allow bacteria to be stored which will purify fish waste. It is necessary to count a thickness between 25 and 30 cm, so that the roots develop. It doesn't take too much either for the water to circulate well inside. It will be enough to stir them a little from time to time to facilitate the circulation of the water, so that the bacteria do their job.

You also need to put in a water drain, which is basically a tube that comes flush with the surface of the water. As a result, the level remains constant and it is this which will set the water level in the biofilter, that is to say at the level of the clay balls. It is advisable to set two or three centimeters below the surface of the clay pebbles to promote evaporation in summer. Moreover, in summer, it is preferable to completely cover the entire biofilter with plants, which will favor the crops so as to cut the fire of the sun.