What is Aquaponics?

Water management is an important issue to us, we take measures to conserve water with our outdoor gardens, however still wanted to explore other options. After some research we decided to pursue Aquaponics, a closed system in which fish provide all of the nutrients for the plants and the plants clean the water for the fish. We built our first system using instructional DVDs in 2013. We quickly learned the many shortfalls that came from the current system designs available when used on a larger scale which lead us to establish Aftaz Growing Systems LLC. We began experimenting and redesigning our systems until we came up with a design utilizing a completely redesigned siphon and an electronic controller to control the flow of the water in the system as well as provide safety features to prevent disasters.

Woodie 1:

Our first system started with 8 IBC tanks used for grow beds, and a wooden fish tank in the middle, hence the name “Woodie 1.” Shortly after we added 3 IBCs in a separate room for fish tanks, added a 2,000 gallon tank for head pressure, and used the original fish tank as a sump tank. This system originally worked by filling the beds simply using PVC valves to regulate the flow, one problem we found was that there was no way to control the filling of the beds, so every bed could fill at once drastically reducing the water in the fish tank. We made due with what we had while we searched for our answer.

Woodie 2:

This is our first system using our own modifications. We started with the controller, giving it the basic function of controlling the flooding and the draining of the grow beds, then slowly adding more and more features such as low water sensors to protect the fish or automatically add water, automatic ad to dc switching, and custom controls to be configured for each system. This was a huge relief to have the systems automated since one single human error could result in the loss of all our fish.

Chineese Garden:

This is a system we pieced together to test the new siphon design we had come up with, so we made another controller naturally with even more features than any others previously made, and assembled a system using our new external siphons. This was a huge design advancement for multiple reasons. Previously a large PVC pipe was used to create a space for the siphon in the grow bed, this caused issues with rocks getting inside and plugging the siphon when planting and harvesting, being quite difficult to clean when this did happen, and the loss of 1.5 square feet of grow area. Our new design gained more precious grow area, reduced the need for cleaning/ maintenance, when when needed made cleaning/maintenance much easier.

Koi System:

We’ve made some more advancements on the siphon design, made a super simple plug and play controller that still provides all of the safety features, and we think we might have something we could sell, so we decided to prove it. Starting from scratch we built a system that could be easily duplicated in the future and operate safely and reliably. Using easily available stock tanks for grow beds, we installed our new fill/drain pipes, new siphons, used a larger stock tank for the fish tank, and plugged it all in! We now had working proof of our ideas.

Retrofitting:

We added a controller to Woodie 1 to reduce the water level changes in our aquarium room, and we added our new external siphons to Woodie 2 to increase reliability.

Available Systems:

The MiniStar

Our in home system uses a simplified controller to protect the fish, and allows you to grow fresh produce and fish in almost any space.

The Morph

These are custom systems that can be made to fit any space from a garage, to a large commercial greenhouse. Starting a 16 beds and expandable to 128 these systems are versatile and can provide income from growing in a small space almost anywhere in the world.

 Okay, I want one of these!

If you would like to purchase a complete system for your home, commercial greenhouse, or you need a current aquaponics or hydroponics system retrofitted, visit our website at AftazGrow.com or send us an email at info@aftazgrow.com