Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi there all,

Finally taken the plunge!
After a lot of online reading, and quite a bit of negotiating with my other half, I've ordered the book and am now dreaming of delicious meals of home-grown fish'n'vegies.

The only challenge now is that we're about to relocate from Brisbane back to the UK (end of 2008). So we'll be leaving the home of Aquaponics where there seem to be heaps of systems and resources and returning to the very fringes of the Aquaponic world, where only a brave few are trying it.

It also means I can't get into planning the system in detail as we don't even have a house or garden lined up yet (or alternatively I can plan the system and then make sure that any houses we look at in the UK have appropriate gardens!)

Basically, from all the many things I've read, and all the fantastic examples I've seen on the forum, I'm thinking about something like this:

• Fish will be Rainbow Trout, maybe something white-fleshed too once I have a clue what I'm doing
• Entire setup will be in a large greenhouse to try and get a year-round season, with fish shaded
• Going to grow lots of herbs and salad vegies
• Want to try strawberries, possibly in some really cool towers.
• Would love some freshwater crayfish / shellfish, but very strict rules in UK so might have to give them a miss

That's the start of the dream anyway - major difficulty in the UK seems to be sourcing appropriate tanks/beds and fish from looking at WelshDragon's posts.

Anyway, that's me for now - will post more as my ideas start to take firmer shape.

hi Andrew, sounds like a good challenge to have

Just got my book / CD / DVD package - great service Joel, and a good lookng package of stuff - Thanks!

Phew! been doing lots of reading, and have decided to start small rather than going straight to a 3000 litre system in a custom-built passive-solar greenhouse !

It's going into a greenhouse to give me some chance of year-round growing, so I've been working on plans for squeezing as much production as I can into a 8' x 6' greenhouse. Here are my first efforts on Sketchup:


Basically I'm looking at a 500 Litre Fish tank, mostly buried to make the most of the space and to give the fish some insulation, as growbeds I've got two metal troughs, 2.4m x 450mm x 325mm (about 320 litres each).

I'll probably start it up with the tank and one trough, using goldfish to learn my fish-keeping skills, and the looking at expanding it. (Or I'll just go crazy and go straight for the 3000l system )

There is enough collective knowledge available now that you could go straight to a 10,000 litre system, and not loose a single fish. Just gotta follow the rules

However, a small system is extremely handy to have as well to rescue fish if something goes wrong with the main system, and as a quarantine - fingerling - hospital tank.

Yeah, I'm feeling ridiculously overconfident now I've seen how easy everybody else is finding it but I'm so desperate to get started I don't want to wait to source and build a huge system - I just want to get something going with some easy, off-the-shelf components, that can evolve into the sump / nursery / redclaw section of my mega-feed-the-5000 system.

OK, we're back in the UK, and fingers crossed, are buying a house in Manchester which has a back garden that's just perfect for Aquaponics. As the IEA is now forecasting oil shortages for 2010 I've decided to throw caution to the winds and go for the "Feed the family" system straight away, rather than my previous mini-system:



It's inside a 12ft x 30ft polytunnel (4m x 10m approx), trying to go CHIFT PIST although my BYAP manual is currently in a container on a ship headed for the UK so I may have some crucial aspects wrong :-). I'm assuming a single pump in the sump (may be duplicated for safety) and that the fishtank then overflows to the growbeds, whuich then gravity-flow back to the sump.

The fish tank is 2700 Litres 72"x48"x48" (1828mm x 1219x1219)
The four growbeds are 72"x48"x18", although we'll only be filling them to 12", as per guidelines, so their effective volume is 680 litres each, or 2720 litres total Growbed volume.
The sump is mostly buried, and is 50"x34"x42" - 1170 litres.

Things that are niggling at me at the moment . . .
- is the sump big enough?
- have I got the growbed / fish tank ratios correct?
- is the CHIFT PIST layout correct - anything I need to watch out for here?
- I've got a note saying that stocking rates for fish are about 6kg / 100 l - is that right, and would that be the case with this growbed ratio?
- Can I add more growbeds? or would I need a bigger fishtank?
- Is this too big to start with?
- for the same growbed volume I can use four of these growbeds, or twelve 48"x24"x12" beds. The smaller ones are slightly cheaper, are already the right height, and may give me more flexibility of layout, but presumably the pipework and potential for leaks means that the four large beds would be a better idea?

What have I forgotten?

Your growbed to fish tank volume is 1:1.... I wouldn't go past 3kg/100L as a stocking density for the fish...

Your sump would have to be larger enough to fill your growbeds + not let your pump run dry.

Thanks Rupert - to get the stocking density up to 6kg/100L do you need to be up to approx 2:1? i.e. double the number of growbeds?



Thanks Lungy - I'm assuming that with gravel, plants etc, water volume in the growbed will be about 30%? The sump is about 43% of the usable growbed volume - so that should cover it?

I would at least start with 50% volume of the growbeds ,over time when full of roots etc it would come down a bit.
Added volume to the sump would give less risk if you`re not onto top ups regularly as well.

One quick revision later :-)



Have kept the same 2700 L growbed, changed the sump to the same size 2700L tank, and have increased the growbeds to 7x680 L (4757 L total)

So now the growbeds/fish tank ratio is 175%
and the Sump / growbeds ratio is up to 57%

And I reckon the Max stocking density is now around 5 kg/100l max

Looks like I'll have a damn big hole to dig for that sump!

Hi Andrew-I

Have you considered setting up 2 systems in parallel?

One thing I don't like about my 6 bed flood and drain system is if something happens to the power supply just after the main pump has filled the beds I lose most of this water out of the sump.

I had a sump pump die while I was out the other weekend, and came home to find my fish in apporx 4 inches of water, and not very happy, luckily it wasn't a work day, and I had a backup pump to put in the sump. In my opinion the main issue with pumps is the seals, and running 2 pumps in the sump is just doubling your pump cost, and you will need to have a backup to replace the one that dies, as the other pump may not be far away from stopping either.

If I had my time again (and I am actually in the process of planning a re-build) I would have 2 x 3bed systems gravity feeding back to separate main tanks (ie. no need for a sump pump).

This way if the power goes out, or a pump fails, all the water still drains back to the fish tank. I can run sepearte systems and experiment with different species, growth rates, quarinteen etc.

I'm also looking into the constant head options, where the water garavity feeds from the main tank to the grow beds, and then a small sump pump takes the water back to the tank.

In a constant head design, if there is a power failure, you only lose minimal water, as once the water drops below the main tank outlet, no further water can go to the beds until the tank is refilled, or the sump pumps sufficient water back. This system is much lower power draw, as the sump pump only needs to be sufficient to pick up the outflow from the beds (probably something like 4-5L/min per bed). The beds can also be lower which is great for the kids...

Just some thoughts you may find useful.

Cheers,
Graeme

Andrew i have a 2700ltr fish tank with 10 growbeds each 2mts x 1mtr by .300mls and my sump is 4500 ltrs it is set up as a chift pist. you will need a bigger sump to stop the pump from running dry. Refer to my post thread "Aussieponic"

Aussieponic

Thanks Aussie,. I'll have a good look. That's a lot of growbeds!