Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Howdy, I'm reading, thank you for all the information. I'm very near deep enough in my earth-sheltered greenhouse aquaculture pit. We digging, well we're busting rocks out of the floor of a 12'x12' space. Currently we're 3' in places following the natural shape of the rock.

I enjoy working in rock, so I plan on building a pleasing to the eye pond. I'd like it to be self cleaning so I'm researching shapes and flows. I'm also considering an island. I've room for roughly 8'X10' up to 4' deep in places.Is there any advantage to an island with a channel around it for flow?

Image link was broken and has been removed
here's a quick sketch of what I'm thinking about

Welcome boss, interesting project.

thank you I'll keep you posted
Right now it looks like a hole in the ground, but we've busted out another two trailer loads this weekend

Looks like it will be a pretty major project - but a fun one! I'll be keeping an eye on your progress :-)


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Hydraulically? No.
Aesthetically? Yes.

A doughnut shaped pond is essentially a race way with the ends bent around to join each other, and raceways suck at self cleaning.

Any particular reason raceways suck at self cleaning? I'll guess it is because of the lack of vortices http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/vortices link for my own clarification.
Some other things I've been thinking about for the channel is making it just deep enough to keep the water velocity high. Did i post my latest idea of building a paddle wheel aerator water mover in the channel? I did a newsletter on it: Let me get it.

The only photo I can find this morning of a paddle wheel being used in a channel is this following photo.


I’ll have to get my paint set out and start putting my vision to paper. In the meantime here is sort of what I’m seeing in my mind: in the greenhouse with earth-sheltered walls possibly surrounded by hydroponic beds, a ten foot roundish pond with an island nearer to one side creating a shallow channel maybe only two feet deep. This channel depth is what I am trying to determine as it will directly relate to the size of the paddle wheel.

I’m hoping the paddle doesn’t need to drop all the way to the bottom of the channel so the fish can swimm past it without being hurt.

The paddle wheel provides aeration as well as water movement. I’ll need to have a pretty good idea of how much energy the drive motor will need because I want this pond to be as sustainable as possible. In that light my hope is the paddle wheel can be powered with photovoltaic panels during the day and stored battery power at night. I’ll also have back up water pump submerged with jets in the channel that can be on a timer.
we made big progress this weekend. I'm almost ready to start laying rock walls in place.

Woah that's a lot of rock!!

I looooove the paddle wheel idea! I have absolutely no idea if it will work as you're intending, I'll leave that to someone else to opine on, but it will look amazing nonetheless :-) I really hope it comes together as you're intending, I'll be watching closely with fingers crossed for you.


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Raceways work and have been used to raise fish commercially for 100 years or more but they are yesterdays technology.

For years now circular tanks have been the standard design and while there have been improvements the self cleaning properties of circular tanks improve every aspect of raising fish with the possible exception of being a little more difficult to catch the fish.

Raceways may be about to have a revival with the invention of the mixed cell raceway a design that combines the best of round tanks and raceways but if you want to go that path best to drop the island from the plan.

Bump! How's things going with this build?


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Thanks for asking.
My latest and grandest obsession I believe is coming along nicely. I've got most of the walls up.The shape is pleasing and I hope functional.

Last week I took a tour of a local fish hatchery. That was extremely enlightening.

It was so cool that I had an idea from research what the elements of the various tank systems are.

I really liked the large particle filter strainer devices they had on the small (for them) breeder fish tanks

I am currently re-thinking all my hydraulics. I can see that it is important to remove the large particles without breaking them up in the water through a pump impeller.

One of the design trade offs with an in-ground pond is the inability to siphon water out. I was planning to use a submersible pump. In order to get the gunk out of our six foot deep wedge bottom tank, I'll need to have the pump on the far side of a large particle strainer filter system that will be located some place where I can easily get to the filter to clean it every few days.

The hatchery had something that looked like a Ski jump, steel sieve shaped in an upward curve trapping large particles.
I haven't got pics of that filter, I may go back to the hatchery for another go-round
Sorry this is turning into another one of my long stories

October-pond-re-thunk-it-lowering-sitting-area-making-room-for-pump

October-pond-re-thunk-it-lowering-sitting-area-making-room-for-pump-ground-level

Edited to remove broken image links and advertising - sorry gang Scotty435

My grand daughter loves the pond now. We can't wait to have water in it

Regarding your paddlewheel idea.... I read a paper recently

Travis W. Brown & Craig S. Tucker (2013) Pumping Performance of a Slow-Rotating Paddlewheel for Split- Pond Aquaculture Systems, North American Journal of Aquaculture, 75:2, 153-158, DOI: 10.1080/15222055.2012.743935

You can read the abstract here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15222055.2012.743935

The found slow rotating paddle wheels to be very efficient in moving large amount of water.

One thing I'm glad about when I dug my pond, is that I didn't have any huge rocks to contend with. Some of them would be been fun to deal with.

I still haven't figured out how the whole thing will look in the end, but I'm curious to see it come together.

I haven't given up on the slow rotating paddle wheel, but I did give up the island plan. So now I don't have the channel to put a paddle wheel in. It was inspirational though and did keep me going. Colum, me too brother