I'm in Western Canada and this is my living room aquaponic setup with a living wall.
I designed and 3D printed the basket holders filled with hydroton clay balls. It has a standard aquarium air pump set up with a check valve and siphon out of the tank to pump to up to a manifold above the top row. The manifold lets me adjust the drip for each column. The right-hand side is a mix of succulents and aloe plants which has a fairly slow drip. The bottom row is mostly newer plants that are being rescued from a countertop pod garden when they've gotten too big and root bound. The light is a crappy cheap amazon grow light. It will probably be the first thing I upgrade.
As for the aquarium, the plants keep the nitrate level to about 5ppm. The red platys in the tank are happy and multiplying like crazy (4 born in the last 2 months). It's to the point I am going to re-home them and I bought a 2nd 50ga tank to avoid overstocking.
After about 4 months, I now clean the tank about once a month just to get the junk out of the substrate and bring the water level back up.
Thanks! The light definitely needs an upgrade. I have a planted tank that's larger but this is my kid's. I've thought maybe I'd avoid a planted tank here just due to the logic that if they're soaking up all the nitrates maybe there wouldn't be enough available for the aquaponic system but maybe that logic is flawed?
I would say it depends if you are harvesting a bunch from the plants above. I would say if you are havesting lots of biomass, consentenlty changing the amount of plant absorbsion up top. I would use in tank plants as a buffer, but this could be an overly causus stratagy.