Strawberries are great candidates for aquaponic growing - they prefer somewhat cooler temperatures, so they’re an excellent candidate for a fall or wintertime crop with the support of grow lights. Most fish are comfortable in the same temperatures, so you have plenty of choices there. Just remember that strawberries really don’t like salt, so avoid any conditions that will expose them to even mildly brackish conditions. Tilapia, koi, crappie and sunfish are all excellent partners for strawberries.
Strawberries do best when the fruit is allowed to hang down, so although they do well in a typical gravel grow bed, it’s worth considering a different growing structure. Vertical towers or NFT options work well, both of which involve pumping water vertically from the fish tanks and allowing it to trickle down through the root zone, eventually returning to the fish tanks cleaned and conditioned. Vertical towers give the highest productivity per square foot, and are suitable for a lot of other plants as well. Even better, vertical towers can be built out of PVC pipe at relatively low cost as a DIY project. Expanding your system is a simple matter of adding more towers. A lot of people try to grow aquaponics strawberries without success. Their problems usually can be traced to issues with water quality. It’s important to balance your fish population to your crop size, since an overabundance of fish waste will lead to a rise in ammonia levels, which is bad for both fish and strawberries. To avoid this problem, check your water chemistry regularly and make adjustments until you’ve found the perfect balance. At that point, your fish and strawberries will thrive.
