Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

HI All,
I want to start off by saying Thank you. This forum is a great and plentiful source of information. The fact that there are so many members sharing all their info on their systems, trial and errors is absolutely priceless.
Well, I've been breeding fish for years, and have always contemplated large systems. I am in the Army and in the past few years I've move from MA to TX to GA and have moved my fish each time, lol, not to easy, haha. While I am deployed to Iraq or Afganistan, my wife tends to my fish, Thx Lisa .....
Anyways, I live on a military base and after the last move, I had to sell off all my Moba Frontosa . I have an empty 300gal in the garage and a running 150gal in the house. So while I am on base, I decided to start experimenting with Aquaponics to learn more. I set up a small system on my patio, that I can hopefully learn a bit before we buy our own house and I build a large system. I only have about 4-5 months before heading to Afganistan for a year, after I return, we plan on buying and building . OK, well there is my intro..I'll be posting some phone pics of my small system and I am definately grateful for any info on some things I may be doing wrong, or some things I should think about..
Thank you,
Joe

Welcome Joe

welcome Jo.....WOW....all the best in your AP adventure...look forward seeing your progress

Welcome
Hang in there, I know waiting to build a big AP system can be grueling
Good to have you onboard

Welcome Mo-Joe, Another BYAP junky

Thanks Ev1

might have been known to be an aqua-junky from time to time haha
Yes, waiting can be very tough...haha, but sitting down and designing a large system will keep me motivated while overseas, ordering piece by piece. I should have a garage full of junk by the time I get back

Bits and pieces are a must
FYI there are a few systems and designs of systems
on Google sketchup warehouse

Yes, welcome Joe, I already met your system (my previous post).

Since you are a fish breeder, you would enjoy culturing tilapia (eating too) if you can keep them warm in the winter. Tilapia tolerate relatively poor water quality, so are fairly easy to grow in high densities. Tons of info on here about them.

And Thank YOU for your service to our country.

Thx jdphish (replied in the system thread)

Thought about tilapia, pretty sure they breed like AFcichlids. I already have a couple small koi in the house and if I set up the 300 outside, the tank inside is coming down. Prob put the koi in the 300 AP system, at least to start with... don't think tilapia coexist w/ koi, but not sure.

Tilapia could probably co-exist with koi so long as the koi are bigger!!! Quite a bit bigger since the tilapia can grow so fast.

If you want to grow tilapia out to eating size fast, I suggest cage culture unless you want to check their gender to make sure you have all male once they get big enough to tell. Growth rates are much slower than advertised if they are busy breeding and such. The females grow quite slowly especially when busy breeding and the males use up lots of energy on breeding.

Hmmm...now that I may look into, some small Tilapia. I'm not really interested in breeding at the moment, seeing my wife will be taking care of any system that I set up while I'm away. I do want to make sure I have enough fish to support the plant growth. My largest Koi right now is about 8". So if I could some how get a hold of some quality small tilapia.

In the process of designing my system for the 300 gallon tank....going to poke around on the site and look at other CHIFT PIST systems.

Getting small tilapia doesn't stop them from breeding. It only takes them a few months to start breeding if the water is warm.

The challenge with tilapia is keeping them from breeding or keeping the fish from beating up on each other if you are trying to breed them in a small tank.

Welcome to the forum Joe. Great to have another (at-least-temporarily) Georgian around.