Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

10 years worth of screw in tree steps that have grown in. It was on a pennisula of a creek bed so it was never considered to be a future mature tree due to washout. The farm was all selectively logged and turned classified about 15 years ago. Now we try and use non protrusive stands and steps.

Don, How did you fair in the ice storm? I'm starting an AP in Spiro, OK (pretty near Fort Smith, AR) and we got hit pretty hard.

I have a lot of trees broken and bent and limbs down. I had power out for 5 days but did ok. I did have a strange thing in the AP garden. The water stayed at about 40 degrees and the power outage stopped the air and the pump so I decided to just let it set. I did not do anything at all to help the fish. I decided that they would be ok because of the low temps. I did not have a single death. even my tomatoes stayed alive till the power came back on. The next morning the fans started circulating the cold air and it killed some of the tomato plants right in front of the fans. I still have tree limbs piled up every where waiting to be made into fire wood. except for the black walnut tree limbs. I have another one about 18" across and 30 feet long. That is going to reduce the black walnut harvest next time.

When you get your thread going send me a message and I will subscribe to it.

Rairdog why don't you unscrew the tree stand screws when you are done hunting each year so they are not left in the trees.

donone,just read this front to back,you get 100% from me

Thanks Dasboot I read yours also and I am jealous of your great progress. I think my biggest problem is the water PH. It is way too high and it will not stay down when I do something to it.

Well I think it is time to consider making this Green house a permanent structure so I am going to start designing a new one. I am thinking of making it about the same size as it is now or a little bigger maybe. I think it will be setup for a rain catchment as well. Last year I had 72.69 inches of rain so I should be able to go straight rain water. if I can catch and hold enough. If I build holding tanks under my grow beds I should be able to store lots of water there. I could probably make about 550 cubic feet of space there. That would make about 4500 gallons that is 4 times the water I have now. That would make a nice sump would it not. I could build new beds and do bell siphons that would dump straight down. no worries on leaks, plugging up, or overflows in the piping. I like that idea. I will have to think on it some more.

Bigger and better, onwards and upwards!

Water makes for a nice thermal mass in a greenhouse. That has some pros and cons though depending on what you are doing. The whole idea of the sumps below grow beds does have the benefit of simplifying plumbing some but if you situation calls for doing any active heating of the water, those sumps also provide a large surface area to loose heat and evaporate moisture into the air of a greenhouse which will cause condensation on the inside of the greenhouse and could also freeze which will block more light out of your greenhouse. So take into account any open top troughs if you are going to be doing any heating of the system water.

Hi Don,

There are certainly upsides to a lot of sump capacity but also a few downsides in my opinion..especially when you get up towards the numbers you are talking about.

- adding iron or adjusting pH on such a large volume will require very large doses.. more expensive when it comes to the iron I guess although you wouldn't need to do them as often.
- if you did have a serious leakage you stand to lose 4500 gallons
- water may get stagnant if it isn't circulated a lot resulting in settling of particles
- while spikes in ammonia would occur slower, water changes would be difficult if needed
- humidity could get really high in the greenhouse in summer and that could result in more pest problems and fungi

Why not have a storage tank for about 2000-3000 gallons and connect it to the sump with an auto top up float valve?

Those areas under the beds could still be used as water storage though for some of the reasons Tom77 mentions it might not be best to have them as an immediate part of the system and having them as basically closed tanks that are contained in your greenhouse you get the benefit of the thermal mass of the extra water inside the system without the drawbacks of having too much water in your system. I know some people say you can't have too much but if ALL your rain storage capacity is in your system and some disaster happens that drains your system, you don't have other stored water to help fill it back up.

Lots of things to think about when planning a new setup. my PH is 8.5 more or less all the time. It has 2.5 iron and is only suppose to have .03 so I use expensive water filters to lower it.

Well Last nite it got down to 7 degrees here and all the tomatoes are really drooping this morning so I think they probably are done for. I only have a few cabbage cauliflower type plants started at present but will have to go get some more plants if the others die. I have some onions and mint that seem to be unaffected also. I don't have heat in my green house yet so it got cold in there. When I checked outside this morning it was 15 outside and 60 in the Green house but I don't know how low it got in there. Must have gotten to 32 I guess.

Still, you have to be proud that you have Tomatoes in January. And from a home-built greenhouse AP system. You certainly put a lot of work into it.

thanks mr bill

It is getting colder here tonight. 4 deg already.