Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Presently i am constructing a shade cloth greenhouse. As soon as this is complete i will begin assembling my system.
I would like to get some feedback if you could start over with a new system with the following parts how would you do it?

3 - 275 IBC's
4 - plastic 50 gal drums
1- 4000ghr pump

My thoughts were to plumb 2 ibc's together using the bottom connectors for fish, 1 talipia, 1 hybid stripe bass. And use the drums as grow beds. That leaves me with an extra IBC. Plus not sure if to turn the ibc into a sump tank or one of the drums, or no sump at all. It would be nice to keeping it simple by draining back into the FT directly from the GB's.

Oh BTW, the green house will be 10X20

Any comments??

I would Bury the 4 Drums Half way or so... As far as u can, With them all linked at the bottom. and use as a sump (THis Creates a 200Gal Sump)
Use 1 x IBC Full as a FT
Cut the other 2 IBC to make 4 GB
SLO -> Fish tank to Growbeds.
Drain all Growbeds into The First Drum
Put the Pump in the last drum & Pump back to the FT

I done Similar using 3 x Drums Linked with 40mm Pipe, Worked Very Well.. Only Reason iv changed the design of the system is cos i moved it too another area and had Buckleys of Burying the sumps there.

This is when i only had 2 barrels. 1 was where the GB's were and the other was under the FT

Thank you Jamey. This sounds like a real possibility of the way i will do it.
Nice and simple.

thx again,
Jim

Other option is to sink a couple ibc into the ground as fish tanks but I think you are going to run short on grow bed if you use two of the ibc as fish tank and only have barrels and one IBC as grow beds.

I personally like to have twice as much grow bed as I have fish tank but that is just me I guess.

Thank you TCLynx,
I like the idea of burying the IBC's. It should help in keeping my water temp more constant. I'm in S. Florida and in the summer i might be able to boil some crayfish in it

And i'm lucky enough that my backyard is mostly sand, so digging by hand should be possible. Unless i hit water.

I'm always on the lookout for anything plastic that can hold water now for some reason. And i saw a mother with her baby in one of those small wading pools. It's "Plastic" (Yah) pools. About 12" deep and 3' - 4' round. So i looked it up at Target and Toys R us, they go for about $10! alot cheaper than my $145 tote that i would have to chop up? I could put a crap load of them in action..........

There has to be a reason as to why no one uses them, though so i'm trying not to get too excited about my epiphany.

I'm testing some of the kiddie pools out on my duck system. They were the smaller ones so not really deep enough. But the plastic is pretty thin and I fear the sun is going to beat on them for a season and then they may crack and fail. Right now the pallets I have them sitting on are already sagging pretty bad.

I personally like the 100 gallon rubbermaid stock tanks as deep grow beds. Not too bad a price from tractor supply for a heavy duty grow bed that if you put it up on some concrete blocks comes up to a nice working height and you get lost of filtration since they are double deep.

You could have an IBC sunk in the ground as a sump and an IBC up at normal height as fish tank and have 100 gallon stock tank beds and one of the IBC's cut in half as grow beds in between and then use the barrels to collect rain water for top up.

All sorts of ideas. I have some tips for using liners for beds and raft beds as well.

+1 on using the heavy duty materials. You really don't need a blowout due to shoddy materials. Picking up dead fish or cleaning up growbed media from the ground isn't the best way to spend the day. Even the blue barrels cut lengthwise need some kind of support. Rubbermaid tanks are built for abuse.

TC has tons of info on her threads. Read, read, read, then go do it. Keep us posted.

My 300 gallon system could easily be adapted to use one of the IBCs as the fish tank and it has held up well to the heat too so let me know if I can assist with an adaptation of that system design to your materials and situation.

Actually, one IBC sunk in the ground as fish tank and two ibc cut in half as grow beds and a 4 outlet indexing valve could make for a nice system and then use the barrels for rain water collection to top up the system and avoid the tap water.

Thx again TC,
I went to the site, not too local but might be worth it to get some quality materials instead of worrying about losing a whole bunch of fish.

They show a 50 gal thats only 12" deep, this looks interesting. But i like burrying the IBC's FT and the sumps. This is going to be real fun. Still more planning i guess tho

There goes my excitement about the kiddie pools. darn it it's too good to be true...........

Well I'm testing some kiddie pools out but I won't recommend them till I've had them in operation for some time to know if they are going to crack up quickly or not.

The 50 gallon stock tanks definitely work but they cost almost as much as the 100 gallon ones and then you need a stand to put them on to have them up close to waist height. The 100 gallon only needs about 4 or 5 concrete blocks under it to be up around 30 inches and it will be real stable (no chance of knocking over like a 50 gallon on a couple tall stacks of single blocks might.)

Hi keysdesease

It's a very good idea to ask as many questions as possible before starting.

A couple of things, the gear you have is probably too much for the 10 X20 greenhouse,
the last thing you want is a very cramped area that you can't walk around easily and the
plants growing on top of each other. Good air flow is essential around the plant to minimise diseases.

Secondly, a greenhouse should be placed to take full advantage of the sun thereby making
that area important for growing plants not storing the fishtank. So I would place the fishtank
and sump outside the greenhouse in its own enclosure if possible thereby freeing up valuable
grow area and the fishtank won't heat up as much as if it were in the greenhouse.

If you decide to run constant flood growbeds you can do away with the sump.
Or use the sump as a spare fishtank.

I've included two sketches of how I would do it.

layout #1 shows the top view of the system.
layout #2 shows the cross section of the system.

hope this helps

cheers Lou

Trout makes a good point. Of course we are talking shade house rather than greenhouse so it is more to keep things from getting to hot for the plants.

Make sure you can really open the thing up since air flow is important in Humid FL

My kiddy pool lasted only 1 season

Other people have found the same thing Jamey....

Thank you everone for your thoughts and photos. I thought i had it all worked out in my head as to what to do. But now i'm back to square one.

jim