Best Aquaponics Kits

An aquaponics kit is a fish tank and a grow bed sold as one system. Water moves from the fish to the plant roots, the plants take up the nutrients in the fish waste, and cleaner water goes back to the tank. The best aquaponics kits for a first system are small and indoor, and that is also what most aquaponics systems for sale on Amazon are: desktop tanks of one to three gallons, grow beds that sit on a 10 or 29 gallon aquarium, and the odd patio pond kit.

This guide compares four aquaponics kits you can buy now, from the Back to the Roots Water Garden to the AquaSprouts Garden, and says plainly what each one can grow. Contents and sizes come from each maker's listing. Where Frank Wood, who started this site, has set a kit up himself, his notes are included. If you would rather build a bigger home aquaponics system than buy one, our guide on how to build an aquaponics system covers the parts.

Editor's Choice

Back to the Roots Water Garden (3 Gallon)

The simplest complete kit: a 3 gallon tank with a planting tray on top, seeds, grow medium, water conditioner, fish food and a coupon for a fish. Frank had his running in about ten minutes. It grows herbs and microgreens, not salads for a family.

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• 

  Best grow bed for a 10 gallon aquarium

  AquaSprouts Garden

  A full-width grow bed with pump and timer that fits any standard 10 gallon tank, so you keep the aquarium and gain a real herb bed.

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  Best budget pick

  Penn-Plax Aqua-Ponic Tank (1.4 Gallon)

  A small round tank with a planter on top and no pump, so there is nothing to plug in.

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  Best for a patio

  Aquascape AquaGarden Mini Pond Kit

  A 5 to 7 gallon patio pond with a planted filter, a pump and a light.

Best Aquaponics Kits Compared

Two of these kits include their own tank and two are built around one you supply. Growing space is the planting area on top, which is what decides whether you harvest a few sprigs of basil or a steady supply of herbs.

Aquaponics Kit Reviews

The kits are in order of how much of the system they hand you ready-made. The aquaponics fish tank guide covers the other route: picking a tank and adding the grow bed yourself.

Back to the Roots Water Garden (Editor's Choice)

The Water Garden is the kit most people picture when they hear about aquaponics at home: a 3 gallon tank with a planting tray across the top, about 13.4 by 13.4 by 9.5 inches overall. The Amazon listing names radish and wheatgrass seeds, a growing medium, water conditioner and dechlorinator, fish food and a coupon for a fish, and Back to the Roots adds a free STEM curriculum for children. The maker's pitch is the aquaponic loop itself: fish waste feeds the plants on top, and the plants help keep the water clean, which is why it is often sold as a self-cleaning fish tank.

Frank set one up and had it running in around ten minutes. In his words it is a charming introduction to aquaponics that keeps a few herbs or microgreens going, not a source of salads. Three gallons suits one small fish, and a betta is the usual choice; bettas are tropical, so most keepers add a small heater in a cool room. The listing does not name a pump among the contents, so check the product page if that matters to you.

Best for: a first kit, a classroom or a gift. Missing: the fish, and a heater for a betta in a cool room.

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AquaSprouts Garden (Best for a 10 Gallon Aquarium)

The AquaSprouts Garden is a grow bed that turns a standard 10 gallon aquarium, about 20 by 10 by 12 inches, into an aquaponics system. On Amazon it is now sold by Carolina Biological Supply, the science education supplier, whose listing names the plant growth medium, the pump and the timer and says it fits a standard 10 gallon tank from any maker. The tank is not included. AquaSprouts also sells a 29 gallon version in birch hardwood, made in the USA, for a standard 29 gallon aquarium.

The design is its strength. Instead of resting on the rim like a tray, the bed wraps down over the sides of the tank, which makes it look like furniture and leaves more depth for roots. Frank's unit measured about 10 by 28 by 17 inches without its light bar, went together without tools, and had a bed big enough for several herbs plus a couple of small vegetables, which he pointed out is unusual for a 10 gallon kit. He also singled out the build: everything fitted, with no visual or mechanical flaws.

One caveat: the plain Garden lists no light, which you need indoors unless the tank sits by a bright window; Carolina also sells it as a Complete Set with a plant light and an aquarium light.

Best for: anyone who has, or wants, a 10 gallon aquarium and a real herb bed. Missing: the aquarium, a grow light and the fish.

See the 29 gallon AquaSprouts Garden

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Penn-Plax Aqua-Ponic Tank (Best Budget Pick)

Penn-Plax's Aqua-Ponic tanks are the simplest aquaponics you can buy: a clear round tank with an enclosed pot on top, filled with the ceramic planting media that comes in the box. There is no pump. You water the plant as you would any pot plant, the runoff drains into the tank, and the roots grow down toward the fish water. The 1.4 gallon model measures 7.75 inches across and 10.25 inches tall, and Penn-Plax suggests a betta, or one to three small fish such as bloodfin tetras, white cloud minnows, danios or guppies. You feed through openings in the side.

Penn-Plax recommends established houseplants or herbs rather than seeds: peace lily, Chinese evergreen, lucky bamboo, English ivy, mint, watercress, chives or leaf lettuce. Because nothing circulates, one plant cannot do all the cleaning, and the maker still recommends weekly partial water changes on the smaller model. That 0.5 gallon version, 5.9 inches across, leaves a betta very little room. The 1.4 gallon tank is the one to choose.

Best for: a desk or windowsill, and anyone who wants nothing to plug in. Missing: the fish and the plant.

See the 0.5 gallon model

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Aquascape AquaGarden Mini Pond Kit (Best for a Patio)

The AquaGarden Mini Pond is a self-contained water garden for a patio or balcony, and with a few fish it works as a small aquaponic loop. A pump lifts water into a plant and waterfall filter filled with expanded clay grow media, the plants root in that media, and the water spills back into a 23.5 inch square basin that holds 5 to 7 gallons. The kit includes the pump with a low-suction attachment, an LED waterfall light and transformer, the clay media and two kinds of polished gravel. Aquascape leaves the rest to you: plants, stones, driftwood or fish.

Treat it as an ornamental pond first. It is built for water plants and looks, not harvests, and a basin this small outdoors warms and cools with the weather, so fish belong in it only in mild months unless you can bring them inside. Where winters freeze, run it with plants alone. For an outdoor system that grows food, see IBC aquaponics and aquaponics greenhouses.

Best for: a patio feature where plants help look after the water. Missing: the plants and any fish.

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How to Choose an Aquaponics Kit

Every kit on this page runs the same cycle. What separates them is how much water they hold, whether a pump moves it, and how much room the plants get. Decide those three and the choice makes itself.

Start With the Fish, Not the Plants

The tank sets the limit on fish, and the fish set the limit on plants. Rutgers Cooperative Extension's introduction to aquaponics (fact sheet FS1351) gives a simple sizing rule: about 10 gallons of water for every pound of fish at their adult size. By that rule a desktop kit of one to three gallons is a home for one small fish, a 10 gallon aquarium carries about a pound of adult fish in total, which is a handful of small tropicals, and fish you might eat need tanks of 50 gallons and up. Our guide to the best fish for aquaponics matches species to tank sizes.

Pump or No Pump

A pumped kit moves tank water through the root zone on a cycle, so the plants filter far more of it and the system can carry more fish. The cost is an outlet, a little hum and one more part to clean. A passive kit like the Penn-Plax relies on roots reaching down into still water, which is quiet and foolproof but means you keep changing water by hand. If you build or upgrade, our guide to the aquaponics pump explains flow and lift.

Grow Bed Size Sets the Harvest

A tray over a 3 gallon tank grows microgreens, a few herbs or a houseplant. A full-width bed on a 10 gallon aquarium grows several herbs at once plus a lettuce or two. Fruiting crops such as tomatoes and peppers need deeper media, more fish and more light than any desktop kit offers. The best plants for aquaponics guide sorts crops by how hungry they are.

Light, Heat and Where It Will Sit

Indoors, plants on a kit almost always need a grow light, because a room is far dimmer than it looks. Tropical fish such as bettas usually need a heater in a cool room. And water is heavy: a US gallon weighs about 8.3 pounds, so a filled 10 gallon setup puts more than 80 pounds of water alone on its stand. A desk that wobbles under books will not do.

What a Kit Will Not Do for You

No kit arrives with the bacteria that turn fish waste into plant food. They take weeks to establish, and adding fish to brand new water is the most common way first systems fail, so read our guide to fishless cycling before you buy fish. After that, the routine is feeding, topping up water lost to evaporation, and testing. The aquaponics fact sheet by Rakocy, Masser and Losordo (Southern Regional Aquaculture Center publication 454, hosted by Oklahoma State University Extension) explains why systems are kept close to pH 7: it is the compromise between what the bacteria want and what the plants can absorb.

Aquaponics Systems for Sale Beyond Desktop Size

Search for aquaponics systems for sale and most of what you find is the size on this page. Kits that produce real quantities of food exist, but they are sold differently.

Why Amazon Has So Few Backyard Systems

A backyard aquaponics system means a tank of 100 gallons or more, grow beds, plumbing and often a stand or frame. That is freight, not parcel post, and few makers sell it through Amazon. Specialist aquaponics retailers sell larger systems directly, usually with design help, and school science suppliers sell classroom units.

Building a Home Aquaponics System Instead

For most people who want vegetables rather than a desk ornament, building is the better buy. An IBC tote, a stock tank or a large food-grade container becomes the fish tank; a grow bed full of clay pebbles drains back through a bell siphon. SRAC publication 454 recommends roughly 1 cubic foot of fish tank for every 2 cubic feet of gravel grow bed in flood and drain systems, and, for raft systems, 60 to 100 grams of fish feed per square meter of growing area each day. If floor space is the limit, an aquaponics tower grows upward instead.

What You Will Still Need

The tank for an aquarium-top kit, and the two things every aquaponics system uses up.

1. 

   110 gallon tank

   Tetra LED 10 Gallon Complete Fish Tank Kit

   A standard 20 by 10 by 12 inch glass tank, the footprint the AquaSprouts Garden is made for. The hood stays in the box once the grow bed goes on.

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2. 

   2Water tests

   API Freshwater Master Test Kit

   Tests pH, high range pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate, the five numbers that tell you whether the cycle is working.

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3. 

   3Grow media

   Halatool Leca Clay Pebbles (2 lb)

   Expanded clay to top up or replace the media in a grow bed. Rinse it before use.

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