Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Not sure how to start. I've been interested in fish and agriculture since I was a kid. My wife is a greenhouse grower. I decided to build an aquaponics greenhouse in my back yard. Rented an excavator and leveled out a pad. Bought materials... But then I read that it could take several months to get bacteria established in a new system.

So I bought some aquariums and got some fish. 5 goldfish 5 koi, 5 tinfoil barbs and 4 Pacu's. The Pacu's had ick. The goldfish got finrot. The Koi got fungus. I decided I needed to get a bigger biological filter. So I bought some tubs and filled them with perlite and clay balls and hung them over my fishtank. And pumped water from the aquarium through the tubs. Within days, my nitrates dropped dramatically from 200ppm to about 40. ammonia and nitrite dropped to almost nothing.

I've got an assortment of seedlings started and a few houseplants rooting out. I'll try to post a pic in the next few days.


My greenhouse is going to be 20' x 66' (about 3m x 20m) I plan to use an 18' swimming pool as my fish tank -- should hold about 2000 gal. Not quite as big as Jaymie's. I'm going to have two layers of plastic and use soap bubbles as insulation at night. a la www.solaroof.org I'd like to have long gravel grow beds along the sides of the greenhouse and tanks for foam board/net pot culture in the center.

Hi Em and welcome, I think you meant 6m wide.

Weather would be a factor in cycling and could be the reason "several months" was quoted to you, normally it is about 4 weeks for us sweltering in 80F+

That is some big fish tank, pictures we need pictures

Hi Em,
Each climate brings it's own set of problems. It's encouraging to notice how many of us are in less than ideal growing conditions.

When I'm feeling that our hot dry climate is unconquerable I'll remember you in Alaska
Best of luck and send us pics, we love to see snow!
Chrissy

emsjoflo, what are you planning to use to generate bubble for the solaroof? I have followed the concept for a while now, though there are some solid challenges to get past that require larger investment for it to function well.

Hayden

Welcome Em,
I'm looking forward to seeing this setup

OK, here are are my humble beginnings

I was all ready to start growing tilapia but then I found out that finfish-farming is illegal in Alaska. The law allows me to grow goldfish or tropical fish -- or fish "customarily grown" as ornamentals. Some varieties of Tilapia are grown as ornamentals but I don't know of any in Alaska. Anyway Koi are rather expensive and I have not found a reliable local supplier. And Koi are doing the worst of any fish I have tried. I'll have to do some more reading.

I briefly considered Yabbies and Marrons or some other sort of crustacean, because I'd be within the law to grow, eat, and even sell shellfish -- but finding a source for them would be a huge challenge.

I wanted fish that would get reasonably large, eat plenty, and be easy to breed. I'm still looking.

here's a shot of the top of one of my growbeds -- the expanded clay is expensive but it is lighter than gravel -- I didn't want to overload the aquarium and the chest it is on.

To produce bubbles, I want to try an oil gun -- it has a pump, nozzle, and blower. I think with a screen hanging in front of it, it could make some serious bubbles. Unfortunately, the motors are not waterproof. So I may have to go with a water-motor bubblegen or a washdown rated blower. I'm expecting it to be expensive. But produce in Alaska is expensive too -- fresh fruit and veggies will help ofset the costs of production. I hope to sell surplus at a farmer's market -- and friends and neighbors say they will buy....

solid challenges -- that describes agriculture in Alaska -- that describes trying to build a bubble-insulated cogeneration-lit-and-heated aquaponics greenhouse while raising a family and working a full-time job.

mmm... you do have a challenge
C1

Hi Ems, Welcome.

Maybe Sarasa comets? I've done well with them. They have a koi look to them, but stay smaller.

So why is fin-fish farming illegal? And why can't you raise "ornamental" tilapia -- they are tropical, after all.



Never tell me something would be a challenge ...

Miami Aquaculture has some freshwater shrimp: Malaysian Prawn and Australian Redclaw. They do ship internationally. It'd be a heck of a shipping charge, but hopefully you could get enough for broodstock, so you'd only be shipping once. The tilapia they supplied me with are doing great.

http://www.miami-aquaculture.com/lvstk.htm

Welcome EMS!
Looks like you're rocking out already! Good luck with the challenges, we'll help you if we can!

Today is my "day off" so I'm going to go dig my lumber out of the snow and put up another wall of my greenhouse.

As to shipping fish here, I've inquired at the pet stores and they all seem to guard their supplier information very carefully. And the wholesalers I've found on the net want a business or reseller's license before they'll even give me a quote. So I may need to start it as a proper business -- at least that way I'll be able to write off some of my expenses.

Before I got hooked on the aquaponics idea, I thought about setting up my own fish store and breeding tropical fish and setting up tanks and getting maintenance contracts.

But I haven't even been able to get my Platy's to breed....
And none of the pet stores seem interested in buying fish back from a customer. But I did find out that Alaska is one of the largest -per capita buyers of tropical fish and aquarium related stuff. I guess people are hungry for the color during the long winters. And there seems to be quite a market for large (400gal + aquaria) so perhaps there's room for me to specialize in large fish.

I'm sure I could breed and sell tons of guppies, feeder goldfish, platys, mollies, and possibly even cichlids..... But I can't envision how many tiny fish it would take to produce the waste to fill my greenhouse ... and keeping all the fry out of pumps and drains could be troublesome.

I guess my point is that I have decided to grow aquaponically. And I intend to do it on a large enough scale that it could be scaled up to commercial size -- or modified to meet the needs of low-income people in other places.

Obviously Arctic engineering isn't applicable to every other climate -- but I figure if we can grow food here -- and do it economically -- it can be done anywhere in the world. We've got extreme cold, winds, snow, ice, moose, bears, legislation, low light in winter, very little dark in summer, rainy seasons, dry seasons.

I look at it like space research -- not every technology that is developed for the space program is integrated into everyday life -- but each challenge that is overcome becomes yet another tool in our arsenal in "subduing the earth."

And I wonder why people fantasize about colonizing Mars or the moon when we've got huge tracts of land where no one lives. When I drive through the mountain passes, I envision huge farms under plastic on the south sides of the mountains -- with massive solar thermal electric generation plants to maintain the living conditions inside -- and possibly even generate enough to share.

Enough dreaming for now.

Great to see you here ems.... You do have a great project ahead of you and it's nice to see you've already got a little set up going, and you've got a digital camera. You could possibly be building the most extreme aquaponics system in the world, well extreme as in conditions..

I'll be very interested to follow how you go with the greenhouse, are there any around your local area that you can visit to see how low their internal temperatures are..? I guess no matter how you look at it, you'll be having to use a fair amount of energy to heat.. I'm just wondering about the comparisons of heating costs for keeping a greenhouse in your conditions warm enough for a cool temperature fish, compared with a tropical species...

Very interesting stuff.....

Hi ems

I'm interested in why you ruled out a double skinned greenhouse in favour of trying the bubble thing.