Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Greetings all from Beebe, Arkansas. My name is Mo and my wife Sarah and I are about to embark on this aquaponics adventure. I have a "head first with both feet" mentality, so in February we will begin constructing a 20'x30' greenhouse to house our system. Having read several books (multiple times) and researching the net, we have decided to build a CHOP2 style system with four fish tanks so that we can keep four different sizes of Tilapia. Hopefully this will allow us to harvest fish every three months or so without having an adverse affect on our system. We want to raise our own fish, but are still trying to decide which method most readily prevents out of control breeding. We hope to not only raise enough produce to satisfy our family's fresh vegetable needs, but also eventually be able to supplement our income. We are already pretty self-sufficient with our milk goats, rabbits and chickens, as well as the traditional gardens we have planted in the past. We are excited to research this forum and welcome any input that the more seasoned among you have to offer.


Reality is all that stands between me and greatness.

Welcome to the forum Mo and Sarah!

I'm not a fan of CHOP2 (not invented here CHOP is Murray's re-branding of CHIFT PIST, CHOP2 solves a problem that doesn't exist IMO), I had a FT->sump setup before and the sump was a pooey mess all the time. You might want to have a bed or solids filter of some kind before the water goes to the sump.

I planned to stagger harvest of fish before but our climate kind of forces a harvest all the fish scenario. It's too warm for trout in the Summer and too cold for tilapia the rest of the year.

Hey, thanks for the welcome Dave! This is the kind of info I was looking for. I went back to my favorite books to see what the difference between CHOP2 and CHIFT-PIST is. I probably should have said that we are building the latter. I plan on pumping from an in-ground sump tank (500 gallon) into a constant height fish tank (series of tanks interconnected) which will overflow into my grow beds (approximately 400 gallons of water to start with.) on a continuous flood and drain cycle. I am building all of this inside a greenhouse which will be heated in the winter. During the summer I plan to pump the water returning to the fish tank over a series of wooden slats for cooling and oxygenation. I am sure that I will learn a ton more, but I'm also certain that this will be fun. According to everything I've read, bigger systems are more forgiving so that's what I'm looking for--lots of forgiveness.


Reality is all that stands between me and greatness.

Sounds like a fun project Mo, my slogan is "start small, start now". Large systems are more forgiving but are not as easy to change, and while you're learning you might want to make changes. I'm on my 11th(?) system now, wouldn't want to be stuck with the second or third one semi-permanently.

My New Year's resolution is to put down roots, which might mean lots of gravel dug into the ground this Summer. Had to fill in the FT hole at our last house when we sold it so I'm kind of shy to make permanent hardscapes haha.