Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

...or suck out some botox and bypass the needle

Most home canning guidelines will say "NO OIL" (oil can climb up during processing and interfere with the seal.)

And anything that is not high acid (or a tested recipe) has to be canned according to guidelines in a pressure canner. Canning is not difficult, but does require following some rules to be certain your products are safe.

Well, speaking of solids removal over in TCL's thread.



After a rain washed some mud into the pond and after me getting in and kicking loose some junk this is what pumped up onto the grow bed.. This stuff has algae growing in it now and is making a thick layer that is preventing water from flowing into the gravel where it should. Where are those worms I put in there? This fall after the pond is drained I am going to put in a bottom drain and a swirl filter if I can make it all fit.

The slim/mud/algae mat you got there- poke it with a stick!!!!!! Or what I usually do is stir it up a bit with a hand trowel, usually allows the water down into it better for at least a little while till it needs poking with a stick again.

Nice looking plants

Hi DanDMan, hopefully not near you, City of Bryan evacuated.

Not near me, and hopefully not upwind from me either.

Yikes! I've got family there!

Well, its been a while since an update...

Cooler weather has brought on rapid plant growth.

The fish are feeding well.


..And thoughts turn towards winter preparations. I have added a home made add-o-mizer to my indoor system to quickly bring the DO up so that I can have at the very least 400 fish in my indoor tanks. I want to feed them all they can eat while indoors. The extra DO has also really speed up the breakdown of organic waste! A DO of 10 does not seem to be affecting the fish any so I guess its ok. I added a packed column also to remove any micro bubbles from the water to avoid giving the fish the "benz."

There is enough bio media to support 400+ pounds of fish in here.
My entire fish system, indoors and out, is operating on 1030 watts of power; continuous. That's not to bad for all this pumping and oxygenating I would say.



The only problem now is that the fish may reach eating size before spring so I may still have to buy more fish next spring

Just because they reach eating size, doesn't mean you have to eat them right then!!!!!
So how many fish total do you think you are running?
What types, tilapia and blue gill?

(I had been running probably about 330 watts continuous (air and water pumps on all 4 systems) and another probably 250 watts about a third of the time on the float switch controlled pump. So that would average out to perhaps 445 watts. (I didn't include the battery charger, inverter, or control electronics but that is pretty minimal except when there has been a power out and the charger is actually having to re-charge the battery rather than just maintain it.) However your systems probably total more than twice the volume of mine and I would guess have way more fish load-I'm under 200 fish. But I'm looking at changing a few things around in different systems.)

So did the solids spill ever sort out?

I have about 200 fish indoors and 500 outdoors.

so that's about one and a half watts per fish

I guess I need more fish. But we aren't eating enough of them to justify more yet.

Tha'ts one way to look at it. KW per fish per month would be a useful figure! KW/Fish per month * grow out time * electric rate + food per fish = Total fish cost...

Now that's an interesting idea.. It would give a quick comparison with store bought fish to see what you might be saving..

If I pull 1kw/hr * 24 hours * 30 days * 8 month grow out then I used 5760 KwHours * my 12 cents a KW = 691.20 for 700 fish OR 98.7 Cents per fish. Of course this indoor system only needs to operate over winter. Even so, I can buy 1000 fingerlings for $250 delivered and it appears it would cost me over $500 to keep the system running over winter; not counting wood pellets to heat the fish house or the $150 I will have spent in fish food

WOW There is no point in keeping fish over winter unless you want security in having stock available! I'm looking at a cost of over $1.50 per fish if I grow out 700 and keep both systems running... I'm going to have to rethink a few things..

The reason I was keeping so many indoors is to get them grown out in one season. I does not look like I can grow them to full size in 8 months unless I get the feeding thing down right and grow only males. I'm starting to understand the economics of commercial fish raising..

The outdoor system has a 400 watt pump that runs 13 minuets once per hour and a 1/16 HP air pump putting about 75 watts. That is a much better operating cost for so many fish.

I'm hoping to collect as many small fry as I can as late in the fall as possible here, I kinda expect the water to stay plenty warm for tilapia breeding at least into October sometime if not later. Then I hope to overwinter those small fry indoors or a smaller outside tank that is reasonable to heat if needed. Then when mom gets here in November, she is going to practice filleting tilapia before it gets too cold and we will freeze all the big ones we can by January which is when the water is getting too chilly for them anyway.

Hopefully that will leave me with a good number of small tilapia to grow as fingerlings over winter that I can put back out in the big system when it is getting warm enough.

What kind of temperatures do you have in your outdoor system? Mine have been running about 80 - 88 F so far as I've noticed this summer.

It may very well be worth buying a kill-a-watt meter to accurately measure your power consumption. Especially so if you are running thermostat controlled heaters over winter.

My tilapia are not producing any more fry.. Or the bluegill in there have gotten large enough to eat them all..