Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I received my order from Lakeway tilapia yesterday. All ten tilapia survived the trip. I am a little disappointed with their size. The website says for food grade tilapia to expect them to be over one inch... I didn't take any out to measure them but in the tank they don't look more than 3/4 inch, and the glass and water cause fish to look larger than they really are so they are probably smaller than 3/4 inch. But I ordered ten, I received ten, and so far all ten are doing well. So I will keep and eye on them and see if they grow faster than the ones I ordered from Tampa aquaculture and see if it's really worth paying more for graded tilapia or not. I have had the second order from Tampa aquaculture for two weeks now I think and they have all doubled in size or more, but I think they might have actually been larger than these graded tilapia are when I got them, although there was a big size difference between some of them.

I've been home sick the past two days which worked out well because the shipment from Lakeway tilapia was delivered yesterday now today to my surprise I got the replacement order from Tampa aquaculture arrived. I hadn't heard from them since I the email I got from them two weeks ago when I told them I had 15 of the 50 die in shipping. They said everything that shipped that day was DOA. They shipped a full replacement of 50 fish. So now I have 11 originals that are breeding now, plus 34 of the 50 from the previous shipment, plus 49 out of 50 survived this replacement shipment, plus 10 from Lakeway, plus 10 babies from my first successful hatch and 16 from the second hatch. I think that puts me at 130 tilapia now. I think I need to finish cleaning my 240 out because I think I'm going to throw all of the tilapia in the big tank once they are big enough to not be eaten, then I will just keep my breeders in a separate tank to make it easier to catch them and remove babies.

Very cool. It seems your transition from pet fish to food fish is complete. I can imagine, but do not know how much effort is required to get a 240 gallon tank up and running. I can't wait for more pictures
Hope you feel better.

Sorry in advance for the long response =)


Thanks Brian. It was a rough few days, sinus issues are the bane of my existence. Thanks dad for passing that fabulous trait on to me. Normally I am able to manage my sinus issues with pseudophedrine and mucinex, but with all of the meth labs now adays my doctor keeps telling me I need to stop buying pseudophedrine seems how that is what they use to make meth and it puts me on the meth watchlist, but it's tough to stop taking something when it is the only thing that works... well the last couple times it seems like it's not doing as good of a job anymore, must be built up a tolerance to it. So I started taking phenlyephrine that they replaced pseudophedrine with, which never seemed to work for me before but it is somewhat effective now but wasn't getting it all... so then my wife picked up some alka seltzer cold stuff that is some other ingredient so I tried that a few times and didn't seem to help... I made the discovery of afrin spray which is absolutely amazing, it clears my sinus issues up within a couple of minutes, but it's highly addictive (being able to breathe is very addictive!) and can cause reoccuring congestion so they say you can only take it twice a day for 3 days then you have to stop... well I was taking it 3 or 4 times a day for about 5 days before I finally found something new... saw a commercial for a new flonase product. My doc always prescribes flonase for me when I go in, but it never helps, but this new product is a slightly different active ingredient so I though I would try it and to my surprise it seems to be working. It clears the congestion and runny nose, not quite getting rid of my sinus headache but you only have to take this once a day and it seems to be helping keep me functioning... but then yesterday I woke up and my stomach is a terrible mess... I think it's just due to all the drugs I've had running through my system this past week, so I'm hoping it is going to clear itself up now that I'm not taking as many (but it could also be a side effect to the new flonase spray I guess)... only time will tell.

The initial set up of my 240 was a bit of work... I shared some of the pictures before that I had a major renovation to build it in to the wall, moved a door, built a beam, built the stand, ran new electric etc. etc. then to get the tank... I had 2 friends meet me about an hour away and a third friend who lived near where the tank was at, I had to remove all of the sand the previous owner had just drained the tank and left it sit done nothing to clean it up, so while I was taking sand out of the tank the owner had to clean his house because there was a huge pile of crap in front of the closest door to get the tank outside (you would think since I had been talking to the guy for two weeks and had actually went up to get the tank a week earlier and he wasn't ready that he would have spent the following week cleaning his house so he would be ready by the time I got there the second time...but he wasn't) he had a few of his buddies there to help carry the tank too but they were young guys and just got in the way so ended up me and my friends carried the heavy sucker out just the 4 of us... set it in the back of my truck then I drove it home and left it in the back of the truck in the garage for a couple weeks while I cleaned the glass and finished getting things ready inside the house, then I had 5 co-workers come over to help move it in to the house and I made lunch for everyone. It took all 6 of us to move it in to my house because we had to travel from one end of the house to the other, going through 3 doorways which we had to have two people on each side of the door to pass it to each other plus the person on each end of the tank, and I still thought we were going to drop it. Finally got it in place and said it will be there when we sell the house because I'm never moving it again... finished building the wall up around it so now it can't come out without ripping the wall apart again. Then I still had to do all of the plumbing and whatnot before I could start putting water in it...

Setting it back up is nothing like that... I've had it sitting there half full of water since I shut it down... I took most of the sand out but there is still a thin layer of sand / crud that was in the sand sitting on the bottom of the tank. I've siphoned it out a couple of times but still have half the tank to finish siphoning out, then I need to clean the glass again since I didn't clean it when I shut it down, now that I'm switching it to fresh water the water flow won't be as fast as it was, and I won't have the rock in there for filtration that I had with the salty setup, so I need some sort of filtration for it... I think I will build another RFF filter then fill my old sump up with K2 type media and then still run a couple of powerheads to help push the crud to the overflow (it has two built in overflows, but the bottom of one is cracked... I previously tried fixing it by siliconing a piece of plexi in but couldn't get it to seal properly so decided to just use one of the overflows instead of both, so I put some plexi in to raise the height of the other overflow to keep it from getting in there). It shouldn't take much to finish and get it running, but I'm working on getting the greenhouse running first in my free time which right now is only on the weekends, and after being sick I didn't do anything this weekend.

I lost track of days, I was thinking the tilapia with eggs was at about day 6 and I wanted to collect the eggs by day 7 to hatch them, but she must have been further along that I realized because I went to clean the tank out so I wouldn't stir everything up when I tried to catch the fish and I noticed a little fry free swimming in gen pop. I managed to catch 27 fry out of gen pop that hadn't been eaten and there might still be more but my lights turned off before I could finish catching them so might be a few more if I look again tonight. I am losing track of how many tilapia fry I have now... I added this 27 in to the second hatched batch I had because they looked to be the same size and same developmental stage (the second batch I had just turned lose 2/24 that they were finally free swimming but still had egg sacks attached, this batch the egg sacks were gone when I noticed them last night which is about the same timing as the second hatch batch so I combined them, they can't be more than a day apart in age so growth size should be similar when they get to grading size.

these are the ones I rescued last night



the first hatched batch are at least 2x this size now. It is hard to get a video of them because I've let the tank get a little algae bloom in it to give them more to eat between me feeding them so the water isn't clear right now. I will work on getting the 240 cleaned up this week then build the filter for it and maybe get it up and running in the next week or so... I need to start separating my breeders from my food for the big ones to make it easier to monitor egg status... so going to pick 3 or 4 females and pick the biggest most aggressive male and the rest will get moved to the 240, then all of the other fish will get moved in as well as they get big enough to not be eaten.

oh and I will have to buy another return pump to get the 240 up and running because I am using the other one in the greenhouse now...

That brings up another thought. When we bought our house the first thing we did was remodel the bathroom because it was straight out of the 70's (and I wasn't born until 85... my wife 87 so we can't have 70's stuff in our house). The bathtub was a jet tub which would have been cool but it was a putrid color of green (and as we cut it out I found the hoses were completely packed with hair...yuck taking a bath in other people's filth). I saved the pump in case I ever came up with something to use it for... I could potentially clean it up and use it for the tank (or maybe the AP system instead)... I don't know if it is rated for continuous usage, but could switch my AP to a timed system to turn the pump on and off...? I don't know what the internals are made of though but I guess I could figure that out if I took it apart to clean it. Might not be very energy efficient either so maybe I should compare that too. What do you think?

Rob

Were did you get your plans for your GH?

Never have seen one like it, is it a hybrid?

I think you are asking all the right questions. I too have a pump and heater off the spa/koi pond conversion. Those same questions came to my mind, along with how many adapters will I need to reuse them? How much soap is in them? How do I ope them? When faced with that many questions in a fish safe environment I usually drop the idea and go looking for exactly what I need.

I designed it myself... it's a hybrid based on the size that I planned to build (16x16) trying to add in passive solar concepts... usually passive solar will be 2x longer than wide, but I tried laying it out in several different sizes and shapes to get the 2x L vs. W and just couldn't come up with a concept that I liked without going much larger than I intended on (32x16 would have been nice... but 16x16 has been hard enough on my pocket book), so I stuck with my original plan to build a 16x16 building. All of the windows except the two at the peak on the east and the west walls are all recycled, so I knew what I had on hand and tried to design something that would use what I had to save some money. The main south glazing was designed so the glass is at 90 degrees to the sun at the winter solstice when we have the least amount of sun available to reduce the refraction of sun bouncing off the glass to allow max penetration when we have the least sun. From there I needed to get back to the center of the greenhouse to where I planned on putting the beam in so I just connected the dots, and the north roof was put at a height that would allow me to stack 55 gallon drums 3 high in there for solar batteries, so the angle just came out to what it is... well actually I had planned on the roof being slightly lower because I was going to butt the rafters up to the beam, but when I had my dad and uncles over helping get the beam up and build the rafters they suggested I just set the rafters on top of the beam and connect them so I wouldn't need any special hangers for them... so it is a little steeper and a little taller than I intended. I decided when putting the roof on to add glazing on the upper south roof as well so just added two piece of 4x8 glazing... I might end up having to cover them in the summer to reduce the amount of sun that gets in because that part of the roof ended up being 90 degrees to the summer sun roughly so might overheat/fry plants, but I figured it would help in the spring (I need to remove the insulation that I put on covering it for winter because the sun is already getting high enough that it should be coming in that glazing now)



that's probably what I'll do too. I will probably just buy another one of the pumps like what I already have because my plumbing is already laid out for it so I just need to reconnect it.


Had a busy weekend.. I didn't get a lot accomplished in the greenhouse, weather wasn't very nice for working outside, cold and windy... so I tackled another project that has been on my list since we bought our house that I just hadn't had time or money to get to yet. I enclosed an additional room in the downstairs of the house to be able to keep the cats off of our workout equipment (they have managed to shred the cushion on my weight machine even though they only have back claws, they think they can sit on the top lip of the backrest which is only about 1" wide, and the cats are twice the size of normal house cats, both weigh about 20 lbs a piece, so they try jumping up on that small edge and end up clawing the crap out of the backrest with their back claws). On top of that it is on the side of the house near the garage and I'm losing a lot of heat to the garage (need to replace the door to the garage, bad seal... on the list...) so it's too cold to work out in the winter, so I thought if I enclosed a workout room and insulated the walls it would help hold the heat in there to make it more pleasant to work out. Plus if we ever sell the house it can be sold as a 5 bedroom 2.5 bath now instead of a 4 bedroom =)

from inside the room looking out... lots of stuff still in boxes we need to organize better


from outside room looking in...


door is reused, took it out when I remodeled either the fish room or the laundry room...


started insulating


drywall up on one wall


mudded the first coat



finished mudding the other wall first coat


new hallway view.. had to relocate a 3 way plug that was on the wall just inside where the new wall is... the switch controls the light in the new room plus a light in the storage area behind it. I did not feel like ripping the ceiling apart so we will make due with both lights being on whenever we need one or the other, so I just put a new box in the new wall and ran a short piece of 3 way wire to move it over to the new wall


view from the storage area first coat of mud on


And I did get a little bit done in the greenhouse... I bought 6 bags of red lava rock which I think amounts to about 9 sq ft, got me a little over half full on the last bed... I decided the size of the rocks I didn't really care for them, so I'll keep them on the lower part for the bacteria housing ability but then I capped the top with a different hydroponic stone we picked up when we saw a hydroponic store we hadn't seen before as we drove around...


the bag for the hydrostone


here is the stone once I finished topping up the bed. This stone has a real sand paper feel to it. The hydroponic shop claimed that it will help reduce nuisance critters in the beds because they will cut themselves on the rock. I topped off my gravel bed with it too to see if it will reduce the fungus gnats or not.

Oh, I also received my seaweed extract (says it's 100% kelp) and mixed up the concentrate. It says one gallon of concentrate (one $12 package of kelp) is enough to make 66 gallons of feed. So I started dumping a little bit of that in the system because I think I'm low on nutrients now after I dumped out the 200 gal fish tank and filter... the system needs some help boosting the nutrient level back up, plants leaves are starting to get light colored so this should help increase the nutrients a bit.

Rob, you sure keep busy!

I think the workout room is my last major remodel on the house that we have planned right now... so I've been busy the past 2 1/2 years since we bought the house but I've almost completely remodeled the entire house so things should slow down and be able to enjoy it a bit more as my boy starts to get to the fun stages of life where life is more than just eating sleeping and pooping =)

he is already getting pretty curious about stuff... last night he was playing on the floor and discovered the wagon of wooden blocks sitting under the coffee table had a string on it to pull the wagon with... he was pretty excited about playing with it, I asked him "what are you doing?" and got a pretty mischievous grin that I didn't have my camera ready for... I tried to get him to do it again but only got a half smile out of him then.

He's really cute your boy!

Our youngest is 3½ now and she's an absolute hoot!

Not afraid to admit she is the greatest love of my life. Dad's little princess......

But also a total disaster!


Cheers - Jens

Thanks, Sam just hit 7 months old yesterday. He is fun to watch as he discovers new things you can see the light turn on in his eyes when he sees something different that he hasn't seen before. We went out for dinner last night for my wife's 30th birthday and Sam slept for a while when we got to the restaurant but then woke up so we were trying to entertain him while he was sitting in his car seat at the table. He got tired of looking across the table at mom and her cousin and started getting fussy that he wanted out of the car seat, so I started to unbuckle him and turned the car seat to face me so I could pick him up easier and that was all it took, turning the seat in a new direction made a whole new world for him to look at all of the new things he hadn't seen before. He quit fussing and was actively looking at everything in sight in the new direction trying to figure them out.

Curious George is one of his (many) nicknames because he is so intrigued by looking at new things and trying to figure them out... and George is his middle name (after his great grandpa on his mom's side seems how I was named after my great grandpa on my dad's side), so he most definitely is my little Curious George.

Gold! You just can't get enough of those little moments!

We had a couple of rough days around here. Wednesday we had high winds (40-50mph winds with 50-60mph gusts) which knocked the power out at work. They sent us home at about 2:15pm. Our power stayed on at home but I lost about 1/4 of the shingles on my roof. I looked out back and saw the roof on my hunting shack was flapping so I got the ladder and went out to check the greenhouse, caught that one piece of metal roof on the greenhouse was starting to loosen so I put a couple longer screws in to the 2x4s instead of just the plywood so caught that before it pulled up. Carried the ladder out back and put a couple long screws in to the roof on the hunting shack to secure it but will have to go out and adjust it/flatten it a bit and finish reattaching it for long term... I took the couple of tarps I had and covered the worst of the roof damage Wednesday night.

Yesterday the power was still off at work so we had the day off. I picked up a couple extra tarps and finished covering my roof damage and had 3 different companies come out to quote me for what it was going to take to fix it... first guy quoted $2400 to replace that whole side of the roof, plus said he would fix the area around my chimney because it is tarred really thick because they didn't put flashing down when they replaced the roof so I have had to keep tarring it every year to stop it from leaking. Second guy quoted $900 to replace just from where it was missing up to the top. Third guy quoted $1950 to replace from where it was damaged all the way across the roof and up to the top in order to fix the chimney leaks too. So now I'm waiting to hear from the insurance adjuster to see what they are willing to do.

Once I got the roof covered I decided it wasn't too cold out so I decided to build the raised beds that I had bought materials for and finish unloading the dirt out of my trailer so I can recover the trailer from the backyard the next time the ground is froze. So now we have three raised beds in the garden. The beds are 12ft long x 3ft wide and I left a 3ft aisle between them. I have room for probably 3-4 more beds this size. I think I'm going to keep adding to the raised beds until our entire garden area is all raised beds because our dirt just isn't that great for growing in the ground. It cost me about $16 per raised bed to build, plus adding dirt... I'm going to have several yards of dirt delivered this spring so I don't know if I'll finish building the rest of the beds or if I will wait until next year and just add a few each year.



inside the greenhouse heres how things are going...

dirt wicking bed




DWC raft bed... these plants were all transplanted from my test system so have been growing all winter.


gravel bed... lots of lettuce popping up


hydroton bed with DWC in the back and the bed on the right I haven't planted anything in it yet. Check out the size of that broccoli plant (big one to the right of the supply line for the hydroton bed) that has basically doubled in size since I put it in the DWC.