This is our Food Forever™  Family Starter System--the most economical food growing system on the market. We’ve carefully selected components to create the highest quality aquaponics technology at the lowest possible price (plumbing included but not shown). Learn aquaponics fast with 90 Days of included Tech Support. All you need to add is grow bed media, (available below)  water and fish.

This is the perfect Food Forever™ FAMILY-STARTER SYSTEM, the FFGS-20, because it’s so easy to set up and operate; plus, you can easily Up-grade it to a much larger system once you’re confident that bringing aquaponics into your lifestyle is the best idea since sliced bread. That Up-Grade is explained below. Here’s what comes with this system: 

The Grow Beds / Bio-Filters serve a dual purpose. They provide a bed for holding your plants in place and also serve as bio-filters by providing a home for friendly bacteria (much like those found in soil), which convert the fish waste to nitrates necessary for your plants to grow. For more detailed information, go to our Grow Beds In Action Page.

The Grow Bed Media we use and recommend is called Hydroton. You can read all about it by going to the Hydroton Page.  Hydroton is made up of very porous round balls of fired natural clay, allowing it to harbor a lot of friendly bacteria. We have field tested Hydroton and find it to be an excellent and easy to work with Grow Bed Media. You can purchase our systems with or without Hydroton.

Deep-Media Aerated Grow Beds are 12 inches deep as opposed to shallow-media Grow Beds that are about 7 inches deep. The advantages of Deep-Media Grow Beds are many. There is more media in them to cultivate a greater amount of the friendly bacteria necessary to convert ammonia from the fish waste into nitrates for optimum plant growth and allowing for higher fish stocking density. They also provide more space for deep rooting plants and root vegetables. Due to their depth, these grow beds don’t need to be emptied and cleaned because the fish waste naturally breaks down as it migrates over time to the bottom of these deep Beds. This feature alone makes Deep-Media Beds a must.

Our Grow Beds Are Aerated, Bottom Insulated and well Supported by strong Tables. These Grow Beds are unique in that they contain Aerators, which provide lots of oxygen for the vegetable roots to grow stronger and faster. The Grow Bed Aerators also provide life-giving oxygen to the bacteria for fish waste conversion, which allows for higher density fish stocking. These are the only Aerated Aquaponics Grow Beds on the market, making them the best and still our systems are the lowest cost systems available today. Our Grow Beds hold lots of Grow Bed Media and water without becoming overloaded. The Grow Bed Tables are designed to support five times the weight that they hold when they are full of Hydroton and water.

Proven Dual-Action Bell Syphons perform double duty depending on how the syphon top-cap is used. You can make your Grow Bed a Flood & Drain Grow Bed or a Continuous Flood Grow Bed simply by adjusting the syphon top-cap. Lettuce and other leafy green vegetables grow well in Continuous Flooded Beds; but all the flowering vegetables like tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, squash, melons and many more require what is known as a Flood & Drain grow bed in which the water cycles in and out of the Grow Bed in about 15 minute intervals. With an FFGS-20, you choose which Grow Bed you want to be Continuous Flooded and which you want to be Flood & Drain, simply by adjusting the syphon top-cap. Go to the “Grow Beds” Page for more info.

What is an FFGS-20-20, what is the up-grade path to it from an FFGS-20 and how does it compare to a FFGS-40?

The FFGS-20 has a single 120 gallon fish tank and two 11 square foot grow beds for a total of 22 square feet of grow bed space. The FFGS-20-20 adds a second FFGS-20 system, and by cross connecting the two systems, it acts like a single larger system giving you 44 square feet of grow bed space. You can raise the same number of fish in the FFGS-20-20 as you can in the FFGS-40, as the number of grow beds is the determining factor in the volume of fish raised. The second FFGS-20 can be added later or ordered initially as an FFGS-20-20 saving money on the purchase as well as shipping.

One advantage of the FFGS-20-20 over the FFGS-40 is that you will have two separate fish tanks. One fish tank can be used for grow out and one for breeding, brooding or purging. You can add an extra multi-purpose 120 gallon fish tank to either the FFGS-20 or the FFGS-20-20, if you desire. When an extra multi-purpose 120 gallon fish tank is added, it comes with aeration pumps and diffusers but no water pump, for it relies on the ample water pump(s) in the existing system. Another advantage is, as with the FFGS-20, the FFGS-20-20 can be shipped on a single 4 X 4 foot pallet reducing shipping cost as compared to that of the FFGS-40, which has special shipping considerations.

The advantage of the FFGS-40 is that you have a 320 gallon fish tank and it can be upgraded to an FFGS-80 by adding a second FFGS-40 system in a cross connected configuration. Like the FFGS-20 and FFGS-20-20, the FFGS-40 can support an additional 120 gallon multi-purpose tank.

Here’s a later picture of a Grow Bed full of cherry tomatoes. These plants were trimmed of their non-productive leaves allowing you to see all the ripening tomatoes and the Water-Delivery Ring.

Here’s a picture of one Grow Bed full of tomato plants. These plants were not trimmed of their non-productive leaves, so it’s much thicker and it’s difficult to find the tomatoes hiding in the foliage.

When you add an additional 120 gallon Multi-Purpose Tank, you receive all the necessary plumbing to connect it to your existing system. The picture on the right shows this 120 gallon Multi-Purpose Tank, which adds versatility to your system. It can be used to separate out fish, called purging, prior to eating or simply to nurse a sluggish fish back to health. This tank can also be used as part of a Breeding and Brooding System. Go to the Brooding Fish Page for information about what it takes to become a Tilapia Nanny. The multi-purpose 120 gallon fish tank can be added later or ordered with your Food Forever Family System thereby saving on shipping.