Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello AP'ers,

I got myself a concrete livestock tank approx. 30'x8' with 2ft of water depth when full, has 8 inch walls and calculated volume of 10800 l or 2800 gallons. It's fed with a spring with 5.1 pH water that constantly trickles in and will fill it when empty in about 8 days. There's a nice stopper to empty and clean it. The tank pH is currently 6.4, probably the limestone in the concrete is buffering it.

In past years we used this for irrigation, dog swimming pond, goldfish, tadpoles and growing algae (it gets full sun all day) but now I'd like to see what food I can grow with it. What ideas does anyone have to scale this up gradually to vegetables and fish - varieties? Certainly, I need to build a lot of beds, maybe plan for a greenhouse or not? Are pump and GB sizing rules still valid taking into account the spring water input?


Thanks for the inspiration,

- Dave

Welcome Dave. Ill be watching this one with interest.

Hi Dave,
Whereabouts in Central PA are you? My grandparents are in State College and from experience, there are places among the mountains and valleys that get long harsh winters. I'd guess you may want at least a small greenhouse to keep yourself in greens through the winter, and then larger beds for summer use when the nutrient load will be higher.

Depending on budget, a greenhouse over the entire tank area with solar heaters may be a good idea, as having a greenhouse into which you pump ice cold water isn't going to do much good. No need to go fancy expensive on it, it's pretty easy to spend only a dollar or two per sq. ft to keep it 'just warm enough'

I'm seeing multiple fish tanks separated with nets and floating beds on top.

poly glass house type roof maybe?

is the ph is a bit low? Pennsylvania gets cold does it?

With that much area, floating beds probably would be a good way to build less GB to use all that volume. And the greenhouse could just envelope the tank and rafts, not other GBs

Can fish be run under rafts or will they eat the roots too much? Could the tank have grading grates located along it so the smaller fish are in one end and the larger the other?

And yeah Pennsylvania can get quite cold. Where my grandparents are at 7 months (Oct-April) of frosts, 3-4 months average temperature at/below freezing, and 1 month barely above freezing at all. The northwest of the state (and western NY) by the great lakes add about one moth to the above categories, and typically get 2-3 meters of snowfall, starting in October and going until May. Southeastern PA near the ocean gets about a month less of the above cold categories.

Great - thanks for the ideas,

I cut a full sheet of 2inch styrofoam to fit the tank and it works well as floating raft and to shade the tank a bit, got some Simpson lettuce growing well. I'm in Sunbury, PA usually the tank will partially freeze in winter but the spring will keep part of it open. Maybe a greenhouse is in the 2014 budget but not this year - I will have to prove to the family that this "hobby" can pay it's way.

What would you all suggest I use for a pump? I'm seeing 1/2 HP sump pumps that will handle 1500-3000 gallons/hour - do I need to go that big? I figure I may only have 500 gallons of GB in the next year or two plus the rafts.

Back to work to figure out the bell siphon thing.

- Dave