Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

picture of my 240 gallon from the family room side...


pic from inside the fishroom (ignore the mess... I've cleaned it up a bit since I took the pic because the wife went in there...DOH! She was supposed to stay out until I finished cleaning up/moving stuff to the shelf but I had stolen her broom and mop and left it in there so she went to retrieve them...)


So from this picture you can sort of see what I did with the stand there... it actually has 2x6 and 2x4 legs which sit on a piece of 2x6 to spread the load, then I added the 2x6 fascia boards to make it look nicer, plus add additional strength so the 2x6 across the top is held up by the 2x6 verticals down to the 2x6 on the floor then attached to the 2x4 and 2x6 legs behind... so that is what I'll do with the shelf too, just add 2x4's behind the existing verticals so the weight is not completely held up by the screws.

just for fun, here is the family room before I remodeled to add the fish tank. I moved the door from the LH to the RH to be able to have the fish tank closer to the utility room so I wouldn't have to run water lines across the room to get to the tank.


two doors in one room!


No wall! New beam!


new wall

here you can see the 2x6 chunks I put the legs on to help spread the load a bit..


added middle 2x4 legs and bottom board to tie it all together


my salty reef tank before I moved everything in to the 240...


before shutting the 240 down to convert it to fresh water... I had let it get out of control and it was covered in algae (this wasn't right before shutting it down... my last picture I took of it though because I was pretty ashamed how bad it got...)

WOO HOO! I just noticed one of my blue tilapia has eggs incubating in her mouth... I'm going to have littles soon! I set up a ten gallon tank with a heater and filter and plan to move her once it gets to 80f to match the tank temp they are in now... So excited! Already broke out the mortar and pestle and ground up some aquamax 400 into powder to feed the fry once they are evicted from mom's mouth... I think I recall reading it only takes a few days to incubate eggs then maybe a week they live in her mouth before they are too big and she kicks them out... I'll post a video tomorrow.

its kind of hard to see because the glass is a bit dirty but if you look close you can see eggs tumbling in her mouth!

external link because it's hard to see without being able to blow up the image...
https://youtu.be/38S9kHRw4Q0

might be able to see better with this video when she turns and comes straight towards me...
https://youtu.be/t-GmCRjJyRI




water looks pretty foggy need to clean my filters out.

I moved mamma tilapia to her own tank. During the act she spit all of her eggs out in the net. I was told this would happen so I was somewhat prepared, but what I wasn't prepared for was that when she did that was when I had her in the net at the surface and went to pick her up with a plastic container so she wouldn't be out of water and she splashed and eggs went flying everywhere.

I transferred her to the new tank and dumped the eggs in out of the net and collected the eggs I could find in the original tank and put them in the new tank and I was told she would pick them back up and continue brooding them, which she might have picked some of them up, but there are still a lot of eggs on the bottom of the tank she didn't pick back up so I'm not sure if they were damaged or not fertilized or what. It's probably too late now that they have laid there for several hours but I have a baby brine shrimp hatchery that I am going to try putting them in to see if I can tumble them yet and get them to hatch. Plus I ordered another hatchery on Amazon that I should receive Saturday thanks to Prime... I figured for $14 and two day free shipping I'd try someone else's design of a hatchery before I attempted to build my own (I'd have that much in to PVC fittings and gas anyways).

Hopefully I get some fry out of this brood one way or another... I was really excited at the possibility of having a whole bunch of little fry already, but even if I got a dozen or two would be awesome... there had to be at least 100 eggs in there so hopefully at least some will hatch since she did pick some of them back up I think.

I've had the other tilapia for 3 months as of tomorrow, but I think if I'm going to have a decent number of fish to put in the greenhouse this summer I need to get this hatching operation underway. Hopefully the other females decide to lay some eggs soon too.

I saw pictures of someones hatchery on a facebook aquaponics group I joined and I have big ideas for that shelf in the fish room now... I think I am going to put the 75 gal and the 55 gal on the third shelf then fill the second shelf with a bunch of 10/20 gallon tanks then put a sump tank on the bottom shelf and plumb all of the tanks together that way they run as one system with the same water parameters throughout and not have to worry about matching water parameters before moving fish from tank to tank.

Well no luck on the fry. She ate the eggs. Better luck next time I guess. I think I am going to order more tilapia because I don't think I have many females... I think most of them back in gen pop are males. I am going to move this confirmed female to a 20 gal and let her live there long term, then I will pull a male out and put him in with her when I'm ready to breed her again. Then the male will get his own tank too which should reduce the competition in gen pop because some of the fish in there are still tiny compared to the two bigger males.

I finished putting plywood up in the greenhouse today so now pretty much everything is done for the walls. I took apart my filter and pulled the uniseal back out of the tank and installed a bulkhead fitting instead so hopefully that fixes my leak. I bought a heavy duty 40 gallon tote to use as my sump, it is wedged between fish tanks and just barely fit. I am letting glue set on my SLO plumbing to the filter so maybe tomorrow I can move my pump to my sump and get the filter running. I also installed a bulkhead in the second fish tank so I can build the second filter and have that tank ready to go too.

I cut the downspouts for my solar heater but need to get a 2 3/8 hole saw to fit 2" PVC in snugly to cut the holes in the back of the heater and into the greenhouse.

Slowly making progress.

Holy cow, you've had an eventful week. Thanks for showing your totally awesome fish-room build. Now I'm seriously envious.

I gave in and ordered some more tilapia. I think most of the fish I have are males. This time I ordered 50 of them so that should give me a little better selection for choosing breeders out of. Hopefully the weather cooperates and they can be shipped soon without worrying about them freezing.

I ended up ordering from the same place I got the first batch from (Tampa Aquaculture) because I was a little pissed off with Lakeway Tilapia. I tried ordering from them a week or two ago and their website didn't ask me to confirm my shipping address, email address, phone number, nothing... using paypal they just used all of the information from paypal and didn't even send a confirmation email so I sent them an email to confirm that they had all of the information and figured as long as I was emailing them I would ask about the picture of the Blue tilapia they have on their website because it is dark blue with red tips on fins but the "Blue Tilapia" I got from Tampa Aquaculture look nothing like that. So I asked if their "pure" blue tilapia are really that color because I couldn't find any blue tilapia pictures on the net that looked like that so wasn't sure if that was because they weren't all pure or what... they got pissed off and cancelled my order then sent me back a nasty email that they refunded my money and that I shouldn't place an order with them unless I was confident that I really wanted their fish. We've emailed back and forth a couple of times since then and smoothed things out and they told me the blue with red fins is an artist rendition, not a picture of their tilapia... so I told them that was kind of false advertisement and that they shouldn't be surprised when a customer asks about it if they haven't put anything on there to tell you it's not real... so I think we worked out the anger and I was about to place an order again but I decided that I was going to get 20 blue tilapia for $44 from them, or 50 for $40 from Tampa Aquaculture... I'm pretty happy so far with the ones I have so I decided to go with the 50 for $40 from TA since I already know what I'm going to get (but there is a chance that they aren't as good of quality as what I would get from Lakeway Tilapia... but I'll take that chance and maybe later on when I need some new blood lines down the road I'll get some from Lakeway Tilapia to compare.

against my better judgement I decided to place an order for 10 food grade tilapia from lakeway tilapia too... I was looking at the tilapia I already have and see such a big difference in sizes, so I'm curious if the tilapia from lakeway tilapia will grow at such random sizes too, or if it is because the ones from tampa aquaculture are not graded (my assumption since you don't have the option of what grade you want to buy from them). So I have 12 tilapia currently and 50 more coming from tampa aquaculture and 10 coming from lakeway tilapia. Now I just need the weather to cooperate.

Wow, what an ordeal. Glad you were able to sort it out. I'm so happy for your experience with fish and that you can share your knowledge eloquently.

Thanks Brian.

I've been spending way too much money this week, but I am trying to get everything set up for breeding the tilapia. My wife walked in to my fish room again a couple nights ago and saw all of the empty tanks I have sitting around... luckily I didn't get yelled at too badly for it... I have the 240 gallon (empty), 75 gal (empty), 55 gal (with 11 tilapia in it), 40B (just started putting water in it last night because I think I need to split up the tilapia in the 55 gal... I think they are all males and there are some that are so small compared to the big males that I think they are going to get bullied to death, so might split them out so they don't have to compete for food as badly and see if they grow faster), three 20H tanks (one has water in it but then noticed there are a ton of detritus worms in it so might clean it out and let it dry out so I don't have them in there before I use it, the other two are empty), four 10 gals (one has a few mollies/platys/a comet and a plecostomus, one has the female tilapia that had eggs, and two are empty).

Then in my Amazon adventures I saw sponge filters that I thought were really cheap ($5.50 a piece for a large sponge filter) so I bought them... then I saw a 4 pack of smaller sponge filters for $8 so I bought them... then I saw 100 watt heaters for $9.99 each so I bought three of them. Then I found 300 watt heaters for $7.84 a piece so I bought two of them (I'm not sure how well any of these heaters will work, they are Chinese SunSun manufacturer... I've got a few SunSun powerheads that have worked well so hopefully the heaters are comparable at least to the other heaters I have... heaters die on me all the time so I hate spending much money on them and decided to just start buying cheap heaters when I find them). I bought a hand held digital pH tester. I've bought quite a few bulkhead fittings, I bought an egg tumbler, a scale, a bunch of diamond bit hole saws, a scale for weighing my fish and another arduino and servos to build automatic fish feeders (the ones available commercially are crap... I have gone through so many of the $13 ones I can get locally that are just set on a clock type device so they feed twice a day... I want something I can program to feed several times a day, had one on my APEX but it fell in the water and died)... then bought more tilapia from two sources... need to stop spending money!

Just found another interesting take on automatic fish feeders... there are places selling the same type of setup as we use for deer feeders where you have a bucket full of corn and a little bit falls on a plate and you set a timer and it turns on and flings corn on the ground for the deer... well they have the same thing for fish food for ponds... might be an idea once I get the growbeds built and don't have anything over top of my fish tanks (or eventually I think I will probably build an outdoors pond for growing fish during the summer in case my trout aren't big enough by the time the water warms up... best option I can think of is to build a bigger tank for them to finish growing in... more water = longer it will take to warm up, and if I partially dug it underground with a roof over top to keep the sun off of it would be even better.

my wife might finally be getting interested in whats to come with the greenhouse... she sent me an email yesterday with this picture attached and sent me a link to this substrate that they are using... I don't plan on going that route, but it does look like a nice setup if you like tomatoes!



http://hortamericas.com/catalog/hydropo ... pert-slab/

I had a HSM Friday, I went to the greenhouse for the first time in a couple of days and found that my fish tank was half empty. Apparently enough gunk has built up in the grow bed that it caused the water level to change in a certain area and started overflowing out the side of the growbed. Luckily my pump was suspended about half height in the fish tank, but it made me decide that it was time to get the pump out of the tank. So I pulled it out and extended the pipe so I could lower it down to the sump tank and run my filter. At first the filter wasn't running good but I figured it was airlocked because I had a 90 inside the tank instead of a T, so I pulled the SLO out completely for the time being and let the water flow straight out the tank. I'm not sure how well the filter is working so far, there seems to be some stuff getting through to the sump but a lot is settling in the sump, so I'll let it and use a wet/dry to clean it out as needed. Today I picked up the T fittings for the SLO's but have not reinstalled the SLO yet, but I did put the T in the tank so I'm not taking water directly off the surface because it was sucking the fish food out before the fish got a chance to eat it.

I built my grow beds today, and I ordered Firestone EPDM pond liner so should be able to get them lined hopefully by next weekend then I can start plumbing the drains and eventually be ready for media.

This is how I did the beds... I used 2x10's then plywood bottoms, then I put pieces of 2x4 or 2x6 across the bottoms to keep them from bowing, then more 2x4s or 2x6s running the length of the beds tying them all together and those boards sit on the cinderblock stands.


East grow bed... this will probably be a wicking bed. 8ft x 2ft


the south bed, 12ft x 2ft




all of the growbeds from the door


growbeds from the fish tank

Just calculating out the media that I need to fill the growbeds..

Reposted from before just for reference on the GB numbering...



GB1: 3ft x 2ft x 9 1/4 inches (2.75' x 1.75' x 0.77' inside dimensions) = 3.70 cu ft

GB2: 12ft x 2ft x 9 1/4inches (11.75' x 1.75' x 0.77') = 15.83 cu ft

GB3: 8ft x 2ft x 9 1/4 inches (7.75' x 1.75' x 0.77') = 10.44 cu ft

GB4: 6ft 6" x 2ft x 9 1/4 inches (6.25' x 1.75' x 0.77') = 8.42 cu ft

GB5: 2ft x 2ft x 9 1/4 inches (1.75' x 1.75' x 0.77') = 2.35 cu ft


So then I need to look at grow media. I want to try different media in each grow bed until we get an idea what we like best and what plants grow best in what media.

I'm thinking GB2 will be DWC to make it the cheapest to fill and will grow the shortest plants in it so I don't shade out the other beds.

GB3 I believe will be a wicking bed because my wife wants a dirt bed, so it will likely be potting soil, should I mix anything else in with potting soil? Coconut fiber? I will add compost to the bed as I fill it too.

GB4 I'm thinking will be pea stone, then maybe GB1 and GB5 see if I can find scoria and hydroton to try in the smaller beds since I think they will be more expensive (buying them by the bag because I don't think there is anyplace that sells them in bulk around here).

What would you do? My tomato plants seemed to grow pretty well in my test system in pea stone. They will likely be my tallest plants so I probably don't want them to be in GB2 or they will block the light from the rest of the GB's. We will still plan on having a dirt garden in the summer, but I want to be able to keep as wide of a variety of items growing in the greenhouse as possible too because the ultimate goal continues to be being able to grow through the winter, and from what I've seen it seemed like F&F's recommendation was a variety of grow medias because some plants were going to grow better in certain medias than in others.

Looking at prices of media...
coconut coir $23.76 / 1.5 cu ft

potting soil $13.47 / 1.67 cu ft

red lava rock $3.52 / 0.5 cu ft

pea stone $19 / 0.5 yard (about 13.5 cu ft)

hydroton $19 / 0.35 cu ft