Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey guys,
Im trying to decide on my first system design. Where I am, its difficult to use IBC totes because its difficult to locate them. I have several barrels and would like to make a smaller system for herbs and leafy greens. My biggest concern with grow beds of ANY DESIGN is temperature. I'm worried about it. a majority of my summer days are in the 100% F. A green house isn't an option YET, but I plan to get some shade cloth/shade. I am still concerned about the temperature of the water heating up as nights dont get much cooler? does anyone have any guidelines to help with his? Do planting bets get all that hot? Is there a pros and cons about continuous flow vs. Ebb and flow regarding water and growbed temperatures?

This may be worth a look for you, its a trial run on three different grow bed methods, one of the things being recorded is water temp. As all three beds are next to one another you can make some comparisons. However a quick scan through dosn't show a clear winner on hot days, may still be worth a quick look though.

The greater the volume of water the more stable the system temp, a well insulated floating raft setup could be your best option but it dosn't lend its self so well to small systems.

I'm still very new at this so if you get any contridicting replies from more experienced members please ignore what i've said.

I reckon some good shade cloth and try and stay away from black plastic GB's, you should be alright, what fish are you planning to run?

Your temperatures look very similar to adelaide's

My little blue barrel system sat in partial shade (only 30% of the day was full sun) and I have no recorded water temperatures greater than 25c.

The fish tank is under the grow bed, so is always in shade, and the media is scoria (scoria doesnt get quite as hot as blue metal (slate coloured gravel)

Consider summer and winter sun aspect when you place your system, and you can get extra shade in summer and extra full sun in winter.

What kind of fish are you looking at?

My water gets fairly warm in my greenhouse during the summer. At night when the air cools off, I pump the water through some old radiators. It helps a lot!

Does that temp flux stress the fish?

The main thing you'll have to think about is the fish species you can have for those temperatures. Shouldn;t be too hard having a system like that though, I ran a barrelponics system here for a while and we have days in excess of 100.

Is there somewhere you can buy a temp gauge that will give you maximum and minimum water temp over a 12 or 24 hour period and what are the goods ones that anybody has had experience with?

Hey

I have a medium sized CHIFT PIST system and this summer (with a total of 2000 gallons)(7600L)
my water temp only got to 88 degrees (31c) because the ST is buried and is covered with the foam insulation...

the days were near 100 degrees (38c) and we were in a severe drought.

the entire system is in a 12 x 33 foot greenhouse which has removable sides which turns it into basically a shade house....

jT

My NFT tubes adjust the FT temp to whatever the air temp is within a few degrees. This is going to be trouble for me during summer.

What I thought I might do is fill a sulu bin with the exit water from the tubes, and pull water from the bottom (colder) to feed back into the system in summer, and from the top (hotter) to feed back into the system in winter. I'm not sure how much difference there will be so I'll need to do some checks before I even attempt it, but I really like the idea of cooling with radiators.

Go to http://www.hlpcontrols.com.au They have one on special atm that has data log to sd card. I have the $60 [PTM50150] type and it records min and max until you reset it.

Many thanks Jorgy, that looks like exactly what im looking for