Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Given that Les will maintain a "higher" temp... and the natire of his staged siphons...

How about this for an idea....

Currently (correct me if I'm wrong) you're trying to heat the volume of the fish tank... while water return from the growbeds is trying to lower it.... farting against thunder as they say...

If Les was to combine the ambient heat of the covered growbeds... and place the heater in the SUMP tank... I reckon he'd go close....

Because of his staged, sequence siphons he isn't continually/frequently pumping water back to the sump.... a relatively SMALL volume of water.... and with the CHIFT PIST setup of his tank... he's only deliverying small (relatively) volumes of water to a growbed (sequenced).... where it will attract some anbient heat through the day...

Can you see where I'm going.... heat the small volume of the sump tank constantly and relatively effectively in terms of heat gain.... pump the small volume to the FT.... repeat through cycles....

I reckon he'd stand a fair chance of adding a couple of extra degrees... might just be enough?

What do others think?

Maybe so - but is yours on 24/7. Also, I may have underestimated a bit. I think I have a 200 and a 150 in the tank - though they may chew more than that. Alos, after some dill left the shed roller open last night, this mornign I whacked another 200 in to try and get the tank up a bit.

Rupe - thanks for the thoughts, but I won't be lumping this problem on Les.

why not

Okay - I've nearly made my mind up that I will get out this week and buy some new header tubes (with barbed bits) for my solar collector stuff (the old ones are a bit brittle and could prove difficult to work with. It looks like the collector is made from EDPM and while the outside of the collector is determiorating a bit to the extent that you get some black stuff on hands when handling, the inside would be sound. Keeping this in mind, I may just - for this rather emergent situation, put my leaching concerns asside and run the water straight through this and into the tank or sump (after giving it a good flush of course). One challenge till be having a pump which will handle the load of pushing the water through but not costing me a heap and/or using a lot of power. For this I'll just have to have a bit more of a think.

If I was to use a pump that had good head, then I could put the collector on the shed roof (not likely to get to this stage). Otherwise it will be back to the option of making up a as many square meters as I can get away with and leaving on the concret skirt to the shed (ie on the ground). I may even place it on some tin to stop the heat disipating into the concrete.

Will give it all a bit more thought - along with a way of making a cheap lean too or half hoop for the grow-beds.

want another option?

take the tank off line, set the heaters to a temp where they are safe but not hungry and overwinter them till the temps rise.

get 90 winter fish for the outside and when nitrates reach say 250ppm do a waterchange bleed with the system.

beat me to it Steve! There will be planty of nutes for your plants left over from the massive feeding over summer. Your fish don't have to be hungry ALL the time to survive.

Monya's solution worked for my SP, and you're a lot warmer up there (most of the time ) so you could try this:
Try keeping them online first, with a blue barrel biofilter running continuous at night and only going through the beds during the warmth of the day. If they look really stressed then take them offline and salt and heat the bejesus out of them.

If you get a solar collector going, watch out for large temp fluctuations between day and night. One night of accidently leaving the solar collector running could drop the temp enough to kill the lot.

If you get this sorted, you'll be in the running for the prestigious World's Largest AP Barra award

yeh, wrap the tank in your poly and cover the top. heat requirement will be cut drastically

I voted for me

nah!!! try Steve's way...if you want to diversify slightly, I can make the isolation tank (reduce it to 500 litres) ready for some and toss them in there...need a heater tho

Query from Bonnie to VB....are they of eating size?

I like Steve's idea best. Now that you have thrown some more heat in there it sounds better.

You been looking over my sholder

so you tried my idea then f&f? how did it work out?

So far so good

Give veeber a breakdown, will help him.