Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I never made it.

My disused pool experiment wasn't that successful either - the neighbours disused pool water is scummy and black, and I think it absorbed a lot of heat or 100M of bue line pipe isn't enough surface area to make much of a difference. It might stabilise it by a degree or two, but it's pretty hard to tell unless you get labratory conditions. It's certainly not the "10-18 degrees all year round" that I was hoping for.

Nice thread gemmell.

Yesterday was 20-40 degrees, today was 16-41, tomorrow 20-39, so we've had some hot weather. I'm pleased to report that my trout don't even seem bothered.

The combination of tank in the carport (full shade), pumping overnight only, low humidity and an extra pump pushing water up over my shade cloth/sheet (evap cooling + aeration), and a good sized air pump are keeping 30 or so fully grown trout happy no problems.

It helps that the nights are still getting cool, I think it'll struggle if we have a few nights running that don't go below 24.

One thing I wanted to cross check with the brains trust:

I have a theory that if I let the water level in my tank get quite low during the summer, the net effect is positive for the system. I think my 3000L tank has about 1500L water in it. My theory is that the most aeration of the water takes place at the surface, so by reducing the water level you're changing the ratio of volume to surface area, and therefore increasing the O2 available. Of course the lower volume also means that it will change temperatures more quickly, but I think that may actually work for us: It takes less time to cool off the water when we're pumping throughout the night.

Anyone done any scientific work to see whether there's any fact to back up (or debunk) the theory?

I sold my house and the new buyer wanted the aquaponics system and its resident trout! I had getting them through the summer down to a fine art in the end. Will spend some time settling into the new place and having my third (!!) child before a start on a system here. Thinking meandering steam through Japanese maples... different set of problems here though.

Here's a video I made last summer on my cooling system. https://youtu.be/zfprIfKhpFs

Congrats on the sale of the house mate!