Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Now normally you would thinks this would be a good thing. But this past spring I decided to dismantle my aquaponic system. It was not doing well due to the heat here in alabama and everything I planted was bolting. So I decided to just put a koi pond in my front yard so my fish would have a place to live and I am gardening the old fashion way. I had 5 tilapia left in the system and since they survived the cold winter I didn't have the heart to kill them, so I threw them in the pond with the 20 some koi I had. Well, they must be happy because last week, to my surprise, I found tilapia fry in the pond. Hundreds of them. And from more than one brood because some were a couple of weeks older than the others. The pond is only about 2000 gallons and I don't have any other tanks to move the breeders to or the fry for that matter, even if I could catch them all, which seems doubtful.

So I've decided I will just keep them and sell the babies. Easy peasy, right? Wrong. I need to be able to catch the little suckers so that means I need to move the tilapia to a smaller tank as well as the fry so when I sell them it doesn't take draining my pond to find them.

I've built several systems before, but never using a pond, plus I got rid of a lot of my older equipment. I need to do this on the cheepo plus since this will be in my front yard now, it has to not look like I've installed a plastic recycling center on my lawn.

So I have two 150 gallon rectangular sump tanks and one 4x4 grow bed that I would salvage and use. But I don't have any grow bed stands. Assuming I connect the two sumps with a pvc bridge, how would I use them where they could overflow back into the pond? Does anyone have any plans for a grow bed stand that doesn't take a carpenter to build? And how would you pump the water from the pond to the system. How do I keep the fry from getting pushed back into the pond when the water returns?

I've been turning this over and over in my head and I just need some help formulating a plan to do this.

I've attached a picture of the current pond and an old photo showing the bed and sumps when I had them set up in better days just to give you guys the visual. Any advice would be super appreciated.

Personally I'd just leave it and see what happens, see what and if things survive.

Ive seen Old small boats set up as a garden feature

You could hide your tanks in one with a few rocks around and large pots with flowers could look nice and neat

Ive seen boats used as growbeds they need extra bracing as they are designed to keep water out not in

You could even make a bottomless "Fake Boat" out of wood From pallets anything is possible

To keep the baby fish in you will need a SLO in the tank with small slots / holes these can be replaced with a bigger hole bottom section as the fish grow