Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Am getting lucky on supplies, I'm working at a store and they are remodeling. They are throwing away the doors to some of fridges, and they have double pane glass, I thought it would be really cool to use those as the top to my fish tank. I requested them since they are being thrown away and I've been told by the night Foreman he's gonna have to talk to the day Foreman (or whatever they are called) but he doesn't see why I can't have them. The glass is roughly 6'x2' so it I get a few I should have enough to cover the top. I was thinking of making fold up doors on it. They've already said they will give me tons of 4x8 plywood sheets. I was going to use them for the forms for the concrete, not to mention tons of 1"x3"s. I can't believe how much stuff they grow away. They threw away the toilet for the restroom (those things ain't cheap).

I really could use a chime in on how thick the concrete has to be minimally. I'm thinking of making an L type shaped grow bed so the pump will have a location, and the medium would be in the other part. Like this


The pump would be stuck in the little box, I'm still considering how to strain the water properly. Since hardware cloth can't be used, would something like a plastic hardware cloth work? Also if anyone wants to chime on the thickness of the concrete that'd be nice. Also a lot of stuff I've read talks about reinforcing it with something like chicken wire and the like. I'm going to be sealing the inside, so if the chicken wire is in the cement should be okay right?

If you haven't done this already, take a look through some of the recent threads where they used concrete and ask them about your design and if they know what the thickness should be. I remember reading in Brian's thread that you can have a thinner wall with a round tank.

I'm glad I haven't got out and bought anything quite yet, I'm still deciding on how I want to do it. I may just go ahead and grab a couple IBC's and I was thinking 3. I'll see if I can talk him him down to 50-55$ each. I like the idea of a quarantined area, so if something happens I can reroute plumbing and just bypass one that's giving me issues. I wanted to initially to have a fry tank, and a tank for duck weed as I'm a big believer in growing what you can.

We'll see, I would like to do something like around 6 IBC totes, and then build a nice deck around them so they look pleasing (without spending a fortune). I was told by a buddy (in the construction industry) to just trench myself, he said it won't take that long and renting a trencher would cost a whole lot more (he said with a few people I should be able to dig and bury the plumbing in one day (there is no way to route the plumbing from the grow beds to the fish tanks without laying them on the ground). But the pipe will come out of the ground and feed the beds (they do not sit on the ground).