Home/Reference/Building a System

Building a System

A farm is assembled in the world; no menu spawns one. Place a pool of water, drop a console and filters around it, and right-click the console to bring it online. You stock fish by right-clicking the water, plant seeds by right-clicking a bed, and harvest by breaking a ripe crop or hitting a grown fish. This page is the construction half: every block, the network scan, the Siphon, commissioning, and layout.

Where a farm can live

Aquaponics runs on a station or a rented room, never on a ship or in open space. The console refuses anything else ("Aquaponics works on stations and rented rooms only."), and the build flow won't place an aquaponics block on any other host.

Placing or breaking a block requires BUILD_MODULE rights on the host; stocking/dosing requires MODULE_USE. On your own station you have both by default; for rooms, ACL, and renting a base, see Stations.

The build blocks

Each block has an inventory icon (in hand/hotbar) and an in-world material (once placed). For most they match; the Water Reservoir does not (icon is a solid block, renders as water once placed).

Every block is Tier 1, MODULE category, item id under the module.aquaponics_ prefix.

Block	In-world material	Network role	What it does
Console	Cartography Table	anchor (none)	Network scan starts here; right-click to commission, read status, and dose supplements. One per system.
Water Reservoir	Water (icon: Prismarine)	WATER	Renders as real, swimmable water. Carries the network and counts as water volume.
Biofilter Media	Composter	FILTER	Converts ammonia into nitrate. Must touch the water.
Grow Bed	Farmland	BED	Where crops grow. Plant a seed by right-clicking it. Must sit next to the water.
Grow Lamp	Sea Lantern	LAMP	Lights beds within ~16 blocks. Burns Drive Cells.
Aerator	Soul Sand	AERATION	Adds oxygen to the water. Must touch the water.
Circulation Relay	Lightning Rod	PUMP	Raises the throughput a large network sustains.
Pipe	Tinted Glass	PIPE	Carries the network across a gap without being a reservoir.

Inspect a placed block bare-handed (below) to read its description and a live meter.

The Starter Kit

The Aquaponics Starter Kit (aquaponics.starter_kit, a Chest Minecart) bundles a first farm. Right-click to unpack: the kit is consumed and contents drop into your inventory (overflow lands at your feet). Inside:

Contents	Qty
Console	1
Water Reservoirs	12
Biofilter Media	2
Grow Beds	10
Grow Lamps	2
Aerator	1
Cod Eggs	4
Lettuce Seeds	10
Siphon	1

Cod is the hardy starter fish; Lettuce is a leafy crop that needs no supplements. The unpack message: "Build a 3×3+ water pool, drop the Console + biofilters + grow beds + a lamp around it, then right-click the Console to commission."

The Siphon removes reservoir water (below).

Sourcing the parts

Buy them. Most aquaponics blocks sit in the vendor catalog at a fixed price.
Fabricate them. Each block also has a Fabricator recipe (under the Industry tab) built from refined metals and planet-mined minerals. The Crafting wiki shows the exact recipe and what-it-takes tree for each block.

Circulation Relay and Pipe are fabricate-only; they have no vendor offer.

Supplements follow the same buy-or-mine pattern. See Power & Supplies.

Reservoir water

In hand the Water Reservoir is a solid block (Prismarine icon). Once placed, it turns into real water a heartbeat later (the delay keeps the pool from lagging in). Fish swim in it; you stock fish by right-clicking the water surface.

You cannot place a block into reservoir water. The block bounces back. Drop a reservoir onto existing water → "There's already water here." Drop any other block into reservoir water → "That's reservoir water; siphon it first to build there."
Reservoirs are removed with the Siphon (aquaponics.siphon, in the Starter Kit). Right-click a reservoir water cell: it removes the placement, refunds one reservoir, and clears the water to air. If your inventory is full it rolls back ("inventory full, reservoir not removed"). Right-click water that isn't a siphonable reservoir and it says so.

The water network

Blocks must be connected into one network; the console checks connectivity via flood-fill.

The scan starts at the Console and floods through its six face-neighbors.
It travels only through conduit blocks: Water Reservoirs and Pipes. The network can be any shape.
It then counts working blocks (biofilters, beds, aerators, relays) that are face-adjacent to a network block.

Rules that follow:

The console must touch the water (a reservoir on one face), or you get "no connected water network."
Biofilters and aerators must touch the water to be counted.
Grow beds must sit next to the water to be counted.
A block of the same material placed for decoration (a plain composter) is never counted; only blocks set down as aquaponics modules join the network.
Water volume = the number of reservoir-and-pipe cells the scan reaches. The chemistry math is on The Nitrogen Cycle.

Lamp reach

A Grow Lamp lights a bed if it's face-adjacent or within ~16 blocks (straight-line distance; your server may tune this). Aim for ~2 lamp-units per bed; under-lighting slows those beds rather than killing them. See Power & Supplies for Drive-Cell burn.

Commissioning

With blocks placed and connected, right-click the Console to commission. If the gate fails, the console prints every shortfall at once with the exact count and fix.

What it checks (your server may tune these):

Requirement	Minimum
Connected water network	must exist
Water volume	10
Biofilter Media	2
Grow Beds	0 (optional)

A failed commission looks like:

[Aquaponics] Can't commission yet:
  water reservoir 6/10 - add more connected Water Reservoir blocks
  biofilter 1/2 - add Biofilter Media touching the water

Each line is <thing> <have>/<need> - <how to fix it>. Fix and click again. When everything passes, the system comes online once (a double-click can't spawn two), plays a confirmation effect, and tells you to drop fish in the water, plant seeds on the beds, add a Grow Lamp near the beds (within ~16 blocks), and an Aerator.

Minimum valid farm: 10 connected reservoir water + 2 biofilters + a console touching the water.

After commissioning, right-clicking the console shows the live status instead of the checklist: the four meters (ammonia/nitrate/pH/oxygen), the bacteria cycle %, the current limiting factor for crop growth, fish and crop counts, and any alarms with a recommendation. Each number is explained on The Nitrogen Cycle.

Fish-only farms

The grow-bed minimum is 0, so water + biofilters + fish, no crops is a valid build. The biofilter still processes the waste; the nitrate goes unused. A fish-only system yields protein and eggs (see Fish). Add beds later and they pull the nitrate the fish already produce.

Inspecting your blocks

Right-click any placed build block with an empty hand to read its description and a live meter. Works on the Composter (biofilter), Soul Sand (aerator), Sea Lantern (lamp), Lightning Rod (relay), and Tinted Glass (pipe). Bare-hand only; holding a block places it instead.

A biofilter shows the bacteria cycle %, ammonia and nitrate meters, and a nudge.
An aerator shows the oxygen level and a nudge.
A lamp, relay, or pipe shows a short description.

Right-clicking a crop block bare-handed inspects the crop. See Crops.

Layout tips

Console on the water's edge: it must touch a reservoir and is where you read status.
Biofilters and aerators in the water line: they must be face-adjacent to water. Line them along one edge.
Beds ringing the pool, lamps overhead: beds must be next to water; lamps reach up to ~16 blocks. Aim for ~2 lamp-units per bed.
Build the pool first, then drop the working blocks: you can't place blocks into water (siphon first).
Use Pipes to bridge a gap (over a walkway, around a pillar), not as a substitute for reservoir.

One system per host

A host (one station or one room) runs a single aquaponics system: one console, one network. Scale the single network bigger rather than building a second.