Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi,
I am a master auto and airliner technician but do not get to dabble in the electrical side much so am needing a bit of suggestion help ocassionally. We are putting 2 older sons through VoTech. Supporting 6 others necessitates eliminating mistakes critical from a time and financial viewpoint.
A little about what we are trying to do:
We ferment our chicken feed 3 days and use a wide variety of seeds. We also have access to a good tested very old spring water source but must use 5 gal or less containers to collect it about 8 miles away. Right now I am trying to create a bill of materials list with the links to dump into my cart when funds are available to build my system using off the shelf highest rated most effecient products to automate as much as possible to keep the load off my wife who likes keeping aminals but her health is poor. The newer WIFI/ Alexa capable type products are coming down in price and look like our best option. I am particularly interested in camera spectral monitoring and it's limitations, costs verses efficacy for aquaponics. We are interested in raising Talapia as where we live the temperature extremes are bad. It gets very hot some years over 115F with very high humidity and high fungus/ mold air and pollen concentrations and winters can have weeks of more than a few days of -16F here. I want to have the tank 98% or so buried for temp stabilization and fungus management with open top and roosting area over the 3/4" square wire above the tank. We are building (~60% complete) a 4 pen modular unit chicken house that will be on poly pipe as rollers to move it enough to access tank. We also have a secondary more conventional chicken coop mounted 3' up on landscape timbers integrated but easily separated from a metal roof covered 7'x ~18' walk into run made (welded) from a donated trampoline frame.
Seeking wisdom from experience on the limitations we will run into. Thank you.
Requirements include avoiding PVC. Polypropylene and polyethelyene pipe preferred to avoid chemical leeching.

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Title of post should say ...backyard....not backward.

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I have changed the title for you.

While I know it's been done in some parts of the world, I'm a bit concerned about the chickens being over the fish tank and having the fish poo as a food source because of the potential for disease transmission. I can't say that I know for fact this will be a problem but it seems likely based on salmonella being normal microbial flora (along with some other things you wouldn't want) in the gut of chickens.

I don't know how far along you are with this but post up some pics

Cheers

Thank you.

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Scotty435,
I understand your concern about destructive bacteria. It is one of the reasons we ferment our feed which effectively acts as probiotics growing enormous amounts of beneficial flora keeping our chickens extremely healthy and prolific layers with extranoridly rich yolks and makes much more ~10-15% sometimes 20% more protien available for conversion. We also add seeding type amounts in the fermenting process of organic Braggs non GMO apple cider vinegar. All this causes to chicken litter be very different than you are you are used to. It reduces acidity greatly and eliminates runny litter. We need to stay off the chemistry management issues until needed post build as my sister and brother in law are both chemists. What I want to focus on is best design and cost management focusing on best practices. Struggling with initial grow beds materials cost is an issue as structure of 400 series CRS is my preferred choice and possess, 140amp mig, gas and crs wire to get it done. But the quandry of limestone leeching causing severe problems and expanded clay quality or disintegration concerns me. There are otger food grade materials that can be plastic welded together such as polypropylene and polyetheleyne but will be more of a fabrication challenge.

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No pics the system is in my head and starting a google spread sheet as soon as I get some greenhouse integretain aspects worked out will share some initial drawing schematics but still need some work on sump filter design and a few hanging baskets done for tomatoes.

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The fermented food is a good idea, I've done that some myself and I know it does reduce the salmonella levels.

V-bearings and metal angle iron rail might also work and be reasonable as a replacement for poly pipe rollers. I wouldn't bother with the special v-rail for an application like this. Sealed bearings do have oil in them and this would be a concern if they are over the water. VXB.com is a source I've used in the past http://www.vxb.com/VGroove-Bearings-s/1466.htm

Using livestock waste is common practice in aquaculture, but, as I understand it, in order to promote the growth of phytoplankton, which provides food directly to fish, or to organisms such as moina/daphnia, which are then eaten by the fish. I think a good idea would be to have chickens above a seperate tank for green water, which could flow periodically to a daphnia rearing tank. Daphnia could then be fed to the fish, or to minnows, and the minnows fed to the fish etc. That would mean a few more tanks though!

Some fish may eat sh*t directly, like mullet in a harbour, but i would much prefer to eat a fish that ate minnows, that ate daphnia, that ate phytoplankton that ate sh*t!