Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

hi

I have been wanted to do a larger system for a while after playing with a small one a few years back.

I moved to Texas a few years ago and I have now around 3/4 of an acre free.
I always wanted to grow my own fish but with price skyrocketing on basic foods my wife gave me the go to check into it.

For now we have some chickens, black Cornish for meat and some reds for eggs. We are going to add some goats (most likely 2 to 4 depending on the cost) so we can have milk and I can make cheese.
So now I am planning to add some aquaponic system to the mix.
I read about all the small scale aquaponic system around and I am not too keen on spending that much on those (overpriced for the most part) systems.

So here is what I was thinking.
2 x 16’x32'x48” pools divided in 16x 4’x8’ enclosures.
10x 32’x4’ beds

Redundant pumps for oxygen and water. As well as battery backup. Our power supply is pretty good but don’t want to take a chance.

Each enclosure will have the fingerlings of the week. if there is too much fingerlings my chicken would take care of any overcrowding. Each enclosure will have removable walls with different size mesh so it prevent the fingerlings for pass but can be removed when more water flow in needed later during the growing of the fish.

I will also grow duckweed, most likely in 20x4 beds. In case the duckweed need more nutrients that the fish can provide I would use compost tee (unlikely but you never know).

I am also going the get some soldier fly and try to get some sort of route inside my (VERY) small town to get food scrap to feed them with. The good thing with soldier fly is that they appear to have very high content of phosphorus. I am planning to feed them almost exclusively to fingerlings as they need very high protein content at that stage.

For the winter I am planning on getting a couple diesel boilers running on WVO and hopefully a diesel generator just in case.
Also i am contemplating using only a "cold frame" system on each of the beds and on the tanks instead of taking a $50,000+ loan to build a greenhouse around them.

what do you think? doable?

Welcome regis! To the forum and to Texas. I'd give it a go! I dont see any reason you can't make it happen. I have been growing only out doors for the past couple years. Cold frames should work. Some people have put strip heaters in the bottom of their grow beds to keep roots warm. Here in east Texas it only gets cold(freezing) two to three weeks a year.

Hi Regis, what sort of fish were you planning on?

tilapia

Regis,
go the diesel generator route and use the waste heat (coolant and exhaust) via heat exchangers to add heat to the FT. This will provide power and heating for the cost of the power generation alone.
Search on the use of used cooking oil (search for WVO, UCO, or Biodiesel) as fuel for your diesel generator.

Regards,
Tony

Tony,

Iam already thinking of using the heat from the generator to heat the home.

I am pretty sure that the heat would not be able to keep the 120 000L of the tanks in the winter.