Are aquaponic systems actually worth it, cost, space, and labor/maintenance-wise?

I have literally no idea. Looks cool though.

Ask in the DIY

Aquaponics doesn't have to be expensive, I'm running a system where I just stick tomato plants through Styrofoam, and float the Styrofoam in a container of water.

>>962503
see
>>958315

>>962503
The initial startup is costly. For a small 30 gallon setup you're going to have to buy

>30 gallon tank
>5-10 fish
>fish food
>air pump
>bubble disk
>heater
>filtration
>live rock (for good bacteria)
>water softener
>liquid carbon
>water testing kit (Ammonia, nitrite, phosphate PH)
>plant growing medium
>growing light

This is assuming you're going to grow the plants on top of the tank, and not use a system that would pump water to an external container, and then back to the tank

After that, your only real costs are plant food, adding water every so often, and electricity

I'm growing 4 strawberry plants that fruit all year with a similar system, except I pump to an external box that houses the strawberries

>>962503
Depends on the goal. If the idea is just to use fish emulsion as fertilizer and take what you can out of the garden, or just as a general hobby/proof of concept, then it's totally worth it; if you're looking to save on food costs the electricity and fish feed is going to cost you more than buying vegetables.

Also, certain foods (and weed) don't taste very good when grown in fish tanks.

>>963534
>if you're looking to save on food costs the electricity and fish feed is going to cost you more than buying vegetables

This is more what I am looking at.
Though ideally I would be doing some solar.

>>962653
I thought the floating raft system was mainly used for cabbage and spinach and etc. Have you experienced any problems with the tomato plants being unstable on the the Styrofoam?

>>963599
Solar would be enough to power pumps if you grow outside, assuming that you also have a battery bank to run the pumps off of at night. But you'll never build an array big enough to fruit plants under artificial light, run A/C to keep the heat generated by the lights down, and all of the other gizmos like auto-feeders, CO2 timers, air exchange systems and dehumidifiers running. I had a 12'x12' grow space that cost me about $300/mo in electricity, and I wasn't even using HPS, that would be closer to $1,200/mo.

If you're only growing vegetables indoors, and not fruit or flowers, you can get away with using T5s, which aren't prohibitively expensive to operate and even a few 8-bulb ballasts wouldn't require installing all that other equipment; maybe still put in a cheap dehumidifier, just to prevent mold.

Actually now that I think about it, it'd probably be easier to just tell you how I'd set everything up, but I'd need to know what you're growing, the space with dimensions you plan on using, and what kind of climate you live in to really dial in the specs.