tl;dr: So far, so good.
Fish
I decided to use koi in my system because they can handle a wide range of temps and are fairly hardy. Plus we were sure we could eat the fish we raised and this way they still have some resale value. Koi that are more than 3" long start to get pretty expensive, so much so that I was able to buy 40 "peanuts" for the price of 1-2 4" koi. What I didn't realize was just how sensitive the smaller koi are.
I had nearly ideal conditions for them. A heater in the tank to keep it within 2 degrees on either side of 77. I kept a steady ph, very low nitrates, and nitrates and ammonia were next to zero and I still lost 8 fish over the first three months. Things appear to have settled down now that most are at least 3" long. I think the underlying issue was two large comets potentially bullying some of the really small fish and potentially a low kh level. Since removing the comets and adding crushed coral and some baking soda I haven't lost any more fish.
Plants
After removing the comets I did start to get some sort of nutrient deficiency in my strawberries. Tomatoes are healthy and starting to bear, raspberries are getting a few fruits and I just harvested the last of our spinach, kale, broccoli and snap peas which all bore very well. The strawberries that are turning yellow are the most crowded and also right up against the furrow on the end of the bed so they're by far the wettest.
We've been very happy with quality of the produce so far. We had a few strawberries that seemed like they weren't quite as sweet as they could've been but were still better than grocery store quality. I'm chalking this up to the fact that they can take up as much water as they want so you can't cut them off to increase the brix. We'll see how the tomatoes and raspberries come out. The greens were all very good quality.
Equipment
I haven't had any leaks or catastrophic failures so far. knocks on wood furiously. I would definitely recommend the Jebao water pump I have. It's been going strong with no cleaning whatsoever and it uses 40 watts to pump 1600 gph. I run the pump more than typically recommended, every 20 min 24hrs a day, and it only uses .4kw per month. I mostly just want to keep the water crystal clear, make sure I'm providing plenty of circulation and aeration. It doesn't appear to have had any adverse effects on the system other than a little extra power usage. I'm currently running two air pumps. This Hygger air pump and this AquaMiracle air pump. I initally got the Hygger but it only supported two air stones and I needed a third when I put the comets in the quarantine tank. The AquaMiracle is louder but does move a fair amount of air. I also figured that if one of the pumps ever cuts out it'd be nice to have a backup running already.
On that note, you can check out my previous post on aquaponic automations and what I do to monitor the health of the system.
What would I do differently?
Not much to be honest. A greenhouse would be wonderful since we have so much hail in Colorado but I've been thrilled with the productivity and ease of use.
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