Thanks for all the warm welcomes.
I am in just the planning stage and I probably miss stated when I was saying I did not want to build a smaller system for experimenting and placing fingerling or smaller fish. I have (as all of you have probably seen) a very specific pda that tells about building a barrel ponic system. I know that maybe a little bigger than what you all are talking about when you refer to a small system, but I have no place in the house or in a covered area to put a aquarium size system right now.
My yard. My yard rises very nicely. We are in the process of redoing the entire yard. We had a 100 year rain fall last year and we had water rush from up the hill into the house. The contractor that built the house but a retain wall to close to the house and did not lower the grade enough. We are buiding a 4' retaining wall 120" long. This will also allow for us to finally get our truck in the back yard.
The highest back corner of the back yard is roughly 25 feet higher than the lowest point. If we were to put an actual in ground pond up the hill we could put in a large pond, the soil at the top of hill is all sand, so it would be fairly easy to excavate. The biggest problem I could see with a pond out on the hill is that it would be very exposed and that could make the temperature harder to maintain, depending on the size of the pond. I wonder has anyone experimented with solar water heaters with inground storage sytems to store the warmer water during the night to help maintain the temperature of the pond. I am sure that this would not make a huge difference, just curious. We are setting up rain water retention tanks on all 4 corners of the house, so we will have access to plenty of fresh non chlorinated water. Of course, we have to have some rain around here for that to work.
I really had not thought about, until doing some more research, putting the pond in the ground, but this seems a very good option. Especially considering the size of our property and the fact that the upper part of the property because of the sand is not useful for much (can't grow anything, because of the massive water usage and need for organic matter), down the hill is really nice, except of the damn nut grass.
Out of curiousity and I guess I could ask this question somewhere else, but if we were to put the pond up on the hill and the beds down the hill in a green house. Obviously the water would easily get from the top to the bottom easily. How difficult would it be to syphon that water back up. I am not worried about using a pump if necessary. I have experience with them in building my sculptures (water features in some,) but just curious. Frankly we would love to be off the grid sometime in the next 5-10 years, all of our electrical, most of our food, maybe only natural gas, since in TX it is still pretty cheap and easy to get. So as they say the less you use the less you need to buy or make.
Also I am curious about something else and this may let you know how little experience or info I have so far. I have notice that many, if not most of the systems have a pond with fish, then a planting area with gravel and /or some other products mixed it to grow the plant then the water is pumped back into the system. I have been on the Grow Power website
http://www.growingpower.org/. They seem to have an extra hitch in the system. The seem to have a pond with fish, then the gravel area where they grow mostly water friendly plants, like water crest, with that water working as the filter to filter out much of the biproducts, then that water still having a good supply of the beneficial waste products goes through another area that has potted plants with compost and coir in the pots (coir being used as a wicking agent for the water). This allows the plants to benefit from the nutients in the water from the fish, but also to benefit from the nutrients and some minerals not found as high in all waters from the compost. I am curious if any knows about this system, has been to one of their workshops, etc. If I spend 375 bucks to go to a workshop that is 375 bucks I don't have for lessons for the kids or barrels for the system or pipe...I am sure most of you know how that goes.
I don't plan for this system to be our only source for gardening. We have a rather large composting system set up and we gather leaves and grass that others throw out to suppliment the piles. Right now we probably have 12 cubic yards in various stages of composting. We will be setting up a rather large area of garden space that will be mostly intensive planting beds. We are also lucky because our city has a great composting program in place so we can buy compost at low prices and we are in the middle of horse country so easily compostable horse manure is easily available.
Alright, probably way more than any of you wanted to know or care about.
I will go and wonder some more. I have already picked up a lot of info from this site. It is great.
Thanks
Jim
Backyard Aquaponics
