Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello everyone, I thought I'd post my thoughts and a drawing over here before I buy the (expensive) fibre glass tanks. So please let me know about any flaws in the design or anything that you'd do different.

In case you can't see it in the sketch the FT is around 3000 litres (2 m diameter, 1 m deep). GBs are 1.5m x 0.6m x 0.35m, holding around 300 litres each.

As I'm new at this I thought I'd go for the good old flood and drain system, with the grow beds above the fish tank, each of them having a syphon and a 24h pump 3000 litres/hour at 1 metre height.
I'll fill the grow beds with perlite.

I know it can be considered a big system to start with, but I know I'd regret having something smaller since my purpose with all this is to feed my family.

What do you all think about fish tank and grow bed proportions? I can always add more grow beds in the future if fish densities are high enough.
In order to have the GBs above the FT I thought I could bury it, like half buried, that way I don't have to raise the GBs so much. Is that a good idea?

Regarding the fish I'll use I'll gladly appreciate input on very sturdy species. Temperatures change greatly from night to day over here, as an example it's 20 C now, but it'll be 4 C tonight, that's a typical day in winter, although it's not that often it can also get down to 0 C. In summer this is the hottest city in Europe, July and August average top temperatures of 35-40 C. Climograph of my city here http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14791
So far I'm going for common carp (Cyprinus carpio) which has been around here (South of Spain) for about 2000 thousand years since the Romans brought them from China.
I'm picking common carp because it seems like a good fish for a noob, since they are quite sturdy, resist high and low temperatures and reproduce well.
I am to see how any fish will do in the cold winters and boiling summers we get in here. I expect the fish might not feed/grow much in December/January, but I hope they don't die. I've got a pond that no one looks after with goldfish in it(Carassius Auratus), there were 10 of them 2 years ago, there are at least 40 now, so fingers crossed.

I'm also building a fly larvae farming pod, I'm not sure we have black soldier flies over here, but I hope it'll work with common flies too, anyone's got experience with this?
I will try as well to grow duckweed, could I use one of the grow beds for duckweed? Is it a good idea to integrate duckweed in the aquaponics system?


There are many more things I'd like to talk about so I get feedback on it but I think this is long enough already. If I get some positive answers on my design I'll order the tanks and build it right away. I will keep this thread updated with pictures when that happens.

Cheers.

Welcome 3 dog! Perlite is a rather small media. I would upgrade it to something larger, like cinder or if your budget allows expanded clay. There is nothing wrong with starting big, it is actually safer as the swings are less likely. Everything is more stable. Black solder flys are everywhere that it is warm enough to have them in, and they radiated with humans. I'm sure you will have no problems in Spain. Btw, you've got some mad drawing skills!

Hi,

Very nice.

On tank to GB ratios. You should be fine with that volume of GB vs fish tank. Only ~40% of your GB will be water, so that equals around 500lt of water. In worse case scenario, when all beds fill, and syphons fire, at the same time, you will have only shifted 1/6th of your FT volume to the beds. Minimal water level drop.

On spacing...can you access the GB from the outside (I.e not on tank side.) as you are leaving yourself only minimal room to access beds. Also fish tank maintenance might be more difficult with everything that packed in.

Finally (I know it's only design a sketch) I would not suggest placing the ft on a grass/lawn area as it seems appears in the sketch. It will be far too difficult to mow around. Make sure you create a nice solid base pad for the whole system to sit on, and consider making it big enough to keep grass and weeds back from the system a bit....it will just make maintenance easier.

Oh...there is a BSF locator here http://blacksoldierflyblog.com/GMap/BSFmap.html that will tell you if anyone has reported sightings in your area.

There should also be info on the associated site regarding the climate zones in which they live...in case the locator shows you no love.

There are plenty of simple DIY BSF farm designs in the web (e.g. blog site above has a very popular one). Maybe give one a go before considering a very expensive bio-pod....if that's what you meant by "purchase"

Thanks Ronmaggi, that was actually my bad, I meant expanded clay, which in Spanish is arlita...perlite... failed translation . So I'm buying expanded clay (will try to edit it), which I believe is one of the most liked media among aquaponers.
My girlfriend is the one who did the drawing, supposedly a sketch before the final-up-to-scale drawing.

DrLuke, thanks for your reply. I already knew about that BSF map, which says there are no BSF in Spain at all, however my girlfriend tells me she has seen the pupae 300Km off my place so chances are there'll be some. I'm definitely building it myself, I don't think there are any marketed biopods in Spain and I have no desire in purchasing one anyway, the design seems simple enough.
Thank you for your advice on positioning of tanks and reassurance that from your perspective there's nothing wrong with FT GB ratio.

Your welcome.

Also...unless you have cheap access to earth moving machinery, or you live on sand, do not even bother trying to burry the tank a bit. I would raise growbed height over digging if I had the option.

Cool sketch!

Real men dig with shovels!

3dog... dont use perlite... it's a complete PITA...

It will float every where... block pipes, media gaurds, and pumps.... and the rest will blow away in the wind...

Trust me it's been tried... and everyone that's done so says... don't use it....

Just use a gravel/pebble media.... preferably no smaller than 12mm....

"3doggg"

are you a fan of fallout?

Ferozaj, yes, it's a nick I started using due to Three Dog, hard to forget such a charismatic character


RupertofOZ, someone already told me that, it was a mistake from a non native English speaker, I meant expanded clay, it seems I can't edit my first post to change it, thank you for the advice.

Ronmaggi, no man can dig with a shovel where I live, it's the hardest soil I've ever seen. Over here you need a digging bar, a wide and strong back and lots of time even for a small hole.

Thank you everyone for your replies, I'll assume there's nothing major (wrong) with my design and I'll go ahead with the purchase of the fiber glass tanks as soon as I get an all estimates from different companies, man are they expensive

Just one more thing, again, any experiences with sturdy fish for my temperatures? I'd like to have more options apart from carp.

I think its a great design. Everything is accessible and of good volume. The carp will be good to start it all off with as they are very sturdy as you have pointed out. I think for fish selection you need to hunt around and see what is legal and available for your area. Is there any fish farming in your area?

Thanks for the reply Charlie, I thought there was none at all but I found some guys farming Tilapia, they heat the water, I'm not going down that road, at least not yet. Apart from that there are no other farming facilities that I know of until you get to the coast, where they farm in the sea itself. Inland aquaculture is almost non-existent over here, so I can't really copy what they do.

Hello everyone, so I could get a better price for the tanks but they've got different measures.

I thought I'd pop in here and see what you think about it. The fish tank would be the same, 3000 litres. The grow beds would be 1.31m X 0.87m X 0.35m rather than 1.5m X 0.6m X 0.35m.
So the old ones were 0.9 square metres each and the new ones are 1.14 square metres. Having 4 GBs it'd be a substantial difference, from 3.6 to 4.5 square metres. Would I still be okay? Should I go for 3 GBs instead of 4? I'm just worried about the amount of water held in the GBs being too big...

Sorry for the nooby question, I was set for the other tanks till I got a new offer, cheers.

I'm of the mindset that you can not have too much GB volume. There are ways to keep the fishtank volume fairly constant. Indexing valves come to mind if you want to go flood and drain. Or you can go with constant flood.