Food Forever™  SMALL-FAMILY SYSTEM--the most economical 44/56 sq. foot 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 with 90 Days of Tech Support. All you need to add is grow bed media, (available below)  water and fish.

This is the perfect Food Forever™ SMALL-FAMILY SYSTEM, FFGS-40/50, because it’s so easy to set up and operate. 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 or more 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. 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. You choose which Grow Beds 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.

The FFGS-50

The FFGS-50 is the identical to the FFGS-40 except with four of the larger 14 square foot grow beds instead of the FFGS-40’s 11 square foot ones, giving you 56 square feet of growing area. That’s 12 more square feet of growing area. The FFGS-40 and FFGS-50 can be upgraded to a FFGS-80 or FFGS-100, respectively, by adding another cross linked identical system.

How To Turn a Continuous Flood System into a Raft System (Do not do this if you are operating a Mini, Compact or Starter Family Food Forever™ System)

Many System Designers use Raft Systems. Raft Systems are made of polystyrene, with holes cut into it, floating on Continuous Flood beds full of water. The holes hold the green leafy vegetables in place. Raft systems are only capable of growing out non-flowering green leafy vegetables like lettuce, spinach, basil, etc. They cannot grow flowering vegetables. We do not recommend converting Mini, Compact or even the Family Starter, FFGS-20, System to a Raft System because you need the Grow Bed Media to perform both of its tasks, holding the vegetables in place and acting like your Bio-Filter. But if you Up-Grade to a FFGS-80, or FFGS-100, you can convert from one or two of your Grow Beds into Raft Systems. The picture on the right shows a section of one our Raft System Inserts. We have designed Raft Inserts for only our Standard 11 or 14 square foot Grow Beds. Look for them on our Product Page soon.

See how the lettuce roots poke through the polystyrene board that has had holes created in it for that purpose. Many commercial growers leave the roots attached to their lettuce to demonstrate freshness to their customers.

This is a Breeding Group. The orange fish are female tilapia and the grey one is a male. You always place about five female to one male in the Brooding Tank. If there are several male and only one female, the male will kill the female in their competitive frenzy to breed.

How To add a Breeding Tank to an FFGS-40/50

To add versatility to your system, we recommend you add the Multi-Purpose Tank pictured here. This Tank contains all necessary plumbing to hook it up to your new enlarged system. The picture on the right shows this 120 gallon Multi-Purpose Tank. 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.

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.

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