Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Some types of chemicals are ok, for example, chlorine can be outgased from the barrel with some time and rinsing. Some types of mild acids or vinegar are fine as they will dilute away, just make sure to rinse very well.

When I've gotten barrels, they usually held food grade glycerin which will rinse out well. Avoid anything that had any sort of soap or detergent since they would use way too much water to rinse out well enough to be fish safe.

Drink or juice bottling places often have drums of syrup which would be just fine for use in aquaponics if you get get them.

I used an old car wash detergent barrel. It took rinsing and soaking for a week to get the suds to stop coming out

Welcome aboard! Any news on your system?

I can't believe you found permission to get catfish: they always tell me I need a permit. *grr* Maybe I should call your CDFG and get a quote on the law so I can tell my local folks. If you could pm me I'd really appreciate it.



I've found that 3' to 4' wide is good for keeping things within reach. 20' long allows you to use standard douglas fir 2x12 with a polyethylene liner (I just get black 6mil (if possible, or two layers of 4mil) 6' wide stuff from the hardware store): fairly cheap and should last several years before decaying. :cross fingers:



Usually, yes. Sometimes things grow huge, like a sungold tomato I have that I've chopped back by 3' at least three times and is still 6' tall. I would bet that pumpkins etc would grow fast and far, but one could train them out and across dry ground..


Yep


Other thoughts:

There is always some controversy on size of pump for understocked systems: should one stick to the 100% of volume per hour or go with smaller amt? I think that if you had just a single cat in the pool you would need no pump and that pumping should be generally proportional to pounds of fish or to feed given or growbed wetting needs, whichever is greater. Say you had 100lbs of catfish in summer: min water would be 400 gal and water is warm and fish are eating a lot, so pump twice that per hour (just to be safe) and all should be well.

Another issue: media clogging. The cheapest media I've found in CA is 3/8' pea gravel (I've also used some 1/2" expensive stuff for better drainage and appearance in some systems), but clogging is frequently a problem and water puddles on top of the gravel. The best solution folks here have come up with is adding worms to the GB: they break up the clogs and free some nutrients much faster for plant use.

Cycling: if you toss in a few little goldfish (no need for a pump) they will cycle the pool to support them without danger....maybe 1/2 lb of fish or less: start out with 20 to fifty feeder fish from your local pet store. The slowest bacteria still double every day, so you could later add 20lbs of catfish fingerlings and start pumping to growbeds and it would take (.5 on day 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 on day 5) less than 5 days for the system to cycle up for them!

Never mind: it varies by county and ours is a "by-stocking-permit-only". Plus, apparently they may not be issuing any stocking permits to new folks until a lawsuit is settled. Why can't things be simple? :grumble: