Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

The grow bed holds about 1100 gallons of water. The volume of the grow bed is 2700 gallons. It fills in 13 min and drains in 30 min.

Just to top things off for the weekend I ate a couple tilapia today. One weighed 550 (1.2 pounds) grams the other
was 540 grams. Not a bad size to eat. very tasty too.

I used the ice method to put them to sleep.

Im still not good at getting one solid fillet.

That is HUGE Dan...

Congrats on getting it finished....

Thanks EB. Its a good size for me, but now that I am finished with this system I see that I missed the mark. The title of this thread is a 2620 gallon/9917 liter system, but It ended up at 2300 gallons/8706 liters. Guess I need a Mod to change the title of this system..

After doing this I really want to try the raft system with much less gravel. Have you had a chance to try a system with half of the grow beds as raft grow beds?

I expect that a system that had a 1:1 gravel filled grow bed to fish tank ratio could probably support a fair lot of plants in NFT or rafts at least during any season that the fish are eating well. Probably just save the grave bed space for the fruiting plants and grow the greens in the liquid methods. I suspect that you would want a very good population of composting worms in those gravel beds to help keep up with the solids since it is the solids handling capacity that such a system would be struggling with.

Cool love the pictures DDM!

WOW
So where are the stepping stones to get out to the middle of that grow bed? Dang.

What ya gonna be planting in there?

Do you offer scuba gear and a glass bottom boat ride too?

Stupid internet...

Rest of the post was meant to say...

Nice, clean, healthy looking fish mate... great job...

Lol, I still have to go buy some stepping stones.

I will be planting:
cherry tomatoes
corn
peas
chard
lettuce
spinach
cucumbers
green onions
basil
chives
stevia
carrots
squash
rock melons, aka cantaloupe
Spelt
.. need more seeds..

The problem comes in how I am going to plant it. If I plant it all at once I will have to much to eat all at once. I have to stagger plantings so that I can harvest more continuously.

No, just snorkeling..

I will be building a tunnel or geodesic dome over the pond. That should make the attraction look all the more interesting.. I already have algae starting to grow in the pond after only two days from adding 400 gallons of water from the first part of the system. Need shade cloth fast..

So Dan how does the expansion work, is it just the pond and the big bed or are they connected to the other tanks and beds some way? How are you irrigating the big bed, with a grid or just a single entry point?

When the weather gets warmer I will be pumping water to the CHIFT PIST tanks inside which will overflow to the large grow bed. Most of the water will be pumped directly to the grow bed. I will be putting 300 fish in the inside tanks and in the pond. I estimate that there is 500 gallons or so left in the pond after flooding the bed.

I might be able to over stock the inside tanks and just pump fresh water from the pond all the time if I add some more oxygen. I am working on a secret plan for adding more oxygen. If it works out I will just over stock the inside tanks. This will prevent fish theft from the pond.

Sounds all very cool, thanks for the info!