Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

if ya think tomato roots are bad, try banana

Great job Rup.

Do the owners actually do any up keep in the greenhouse or is this a deal where you also maintain the system every so many weeks? Looked like a lot of the broccoli went to seed, maybe just the tiny side shoots?

At the moment I'm maintaining the system, along with the farm manager...

The broccoli was a "sprouting" variety Ryan... and a waste of space IMO...

You said you set up an automatic fish feeder for this site. Got pics, brand, specs?
And how far from your place is this site? Hope you don't have to go too far for maintenance checkups.

Bill, I initially setup a Cloverleaf feeder for the main trout tank... but removed it after an over-feeding incident... and due to the water temperatures over the last month...

Often, due to the temps... the trout aren't fed at all for several days...

Well looks like mother nature is going to beat me at this site...

I've been collecting thermal data to determine how much heat gain we get from ambient air transfer in the shed... as opposed to transferrence from the grow beds in the greenhouse...

To try and decide whether to just chill the water... insulate the shed... or both...

It's been a weird summer up at the site... with virtually nil wind for nearly six weeks...and very warm nights...

Bottom line is we just haven't been getting enough cooling through the night into the tank, even with adjusted pump cycles... or continous flooding over night...

Tank temps have been hovering around 24-28 for the better part of a week....

And over this weekend and today... has seen them sitting at 28 almost constantly for three days...

Lost about 4-5 trout over the last couple of days.... and another half dozen today... and expect that with night temps actually expected to rise tonigh before a scorcher tomorrow... that we might well lose the rest overnight... despite icing, a water change.. and switching the pumps to continuous flow....

Bit of a pity, as I had arrange for a chiller on loan for eval... delivered tomorrow morning...

And if the site follows "normal" seasonal patterns I'd expect night temperatures to begin declining to around 12-15 overnight within a week or two...

Close, yet just not close enough...

P.S... there has been a few trout that have jumped out of the tank over the last couple of days... and into a couple of different freezers...

Will see how things are in the morning... if there's enough survivors, I'll throw the chiller on and see how things go...

We're expecting temps to range from 25-35+ for the next week... at that's 25... overnight....

Gday rup
what do all the outside beds look like now

Barren... other than some corn, and some sort of nightshade plant...

The rabbits ate the rest... for some reason that haven't touched the corn...

wabbit stew sounds good

Last night was much cooler than expected... and a combination of icing and water change...

Brought the temperature down to about 25 this morning... thought we might be in with a chance... especially with a chiller on the way...

By midday it was 45 degrees in the greenhouse... 35 in the shed.... tank around 27...

The "chiller" which was supposed to turn up around 09:00... didn't turn up until 13:30... and was basically an aquarium chiller... at most a 1000L... ...

Hooked it up anyway... as the tank temp was now nudging 28 at 14:00... with the greenhouse topping 50... and ambient air temp 38....

Turns out the guy didn't bring a pump...

Shot back home to pick up a pump... and got back up to the site about 2 hours later...

Tank temp 30.4 ... .... ten trout definitely weren't going to make it... so they're now in the fridge.... just a whisker under 4 kg for the ten fish... so they averaged about 28cm, and around 400gm...



Dropped the water out of the tank... iced... refilled... and cranked the "chiller" on...

Had only managed to drop the temp back to 27.5 by the time I left... so not much hope by the morning me thinks... told Jim to pull the rest.. or deal with it in the morning...

Real bugger.. only had to get past tomorrow... and we probably would have been right...

Hopefully all is well today if the chiller gets the temp down...

Regards
Matt

Just a thought Rupt on that big fan is it blowing in or out if in moss have a very fine spray setup they use bugger al water put this around the fan it will drop the temp a fair bit
I just have one of the spray heads in the glass house
bunnings have pedistle fans for patios with the water arrangement

Dicko has your solution for warm weather trout survival. The thermostatically controlled freezer fish tank.

Bugger.

I would be interested to see how F&Fs mister style cooling would work in your greenhouse. The whole evaporation thing is kind of diluted by it being inside a greenhouse. Also coastal areas are a lot more humid than Canberra. Would work great here.

The other thing that seems to be working for me is big F off pumps just pumping the water up into the air and coming back down splashing like crazy. Might not cool the water but maybe they can live in that super oxygenated part right underneath that pump (kind of like a waterfall).

As an aside, did you know firefighters use a mister as a heat shield, they put one hose on a mist setting so that the heat is evaporating that shield and protecting them whilst they're spraying the fire with another hose. If it's good enough for a firey, it must work great guns for our purposes too.

Hi Gremmel it will work because there is a fan behind it its just like an evaporative cooler [swampy] chicken sheds use it it works in my glasshouse
I still think its worth a try