Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi All,

A newbie here.......

I live in Texas, just south of Dallas, on the Dallas / Ellis County line.

I want to grow tilapia and catfish.

I have been lurking here for a few Month's, and have learned an enormous amount of stuff. I was extreamly surprised to find that were so many PPL like me, already out there, doing the BYAP thing..... and so many in Tx.
I wish I had found this forum 2 years ago when I started the building process for my green house and fish tank in it. I might have been able to build in some features, that I will now have to implement in some other way......

I finely got water in the 5000gal concrete Tank after the last epoxy coat dried for a week, and so far so good, no seeps or leaks

My Biofilter has been running for about 3 mo, and is cycled good with Goldfish in it. Lot's of Brown biofilm on all the White, or lite colored things in the barrels where it is easy to see......

It is made from 3 blue barrels, setup like shown at the bottom of this web page:
http://www.koipondcentral.com/articles/filtration.htm

As a Recirculating system. Some tank water will be used to water the plants in the greenhouse, or on the dirt garden, and being replaced with activated charcoal filtered city water or rain water.....
This setup also includes 2 clear barrels for keeping the baby fry in, till they get big enough for a grow out cage. These 2 barrels are hooked to the biofilter barrels via airlift pumps from the last biofilter barrel, to get the water to them, and siphon's to return the water to the first biofilter barrel.

The original plan was to have hydroponic 4" NFT Pipes, to grow plants in. For some reason I had missed it, or forgot, that the gravel in a growbed is a biofilter also, so next spring, I will add the F&D gravel Grow beds / sump, for more biofilter and growing plants, in place of the hydroponic 4" NFT Pipes that was planned to begin with.

I currently have 1, 4' x 4' x 4' Happa Net Cage with a fine mesh netting on the bottom, built up and in the Tank for the breeding Tilapia, and have the Materials for 3 more grow out Happa Cages that will have larger size netting on the bottom, so that the eggs will fall through.

I can get some breeding age Tilapia from Overton fisherys in Centerville, or from several places near Houston.
But after much reading, I realize that not all Mossambicus Tilapia are created equal, some grow faster, or have better characteristics than others......
It just seems that Overton's tilapia are more for forage fish, and not so much a good Eating fish........ I would like to start out with the best strain I can get.......
If there is someone around the Texas area, that has Mossambicus Tilapia, with better than normal characteristics, and are willing to sell me a few breeding age fish, I would really appreciate it. Otherwise i will get some form Overton, along with the catfish fingerings.

Inside my green house, I can over winter the Tilapia. It may not be warm enough for them to breed in Jan, but should be no problem keeping it warm enough to keep them going over the winter, as my plants in there did great during the cold spells of Jan and Feb this year...........

Will post pics soon.......

Thanks

RS

Welcome to the forum RS... look forward to following your aquaponics adventure...

Welcome!!!!!

I've been growing catfish and blue tilapia here in FL. (I might not put much effort into overwintering many tilapia this winter though, just a few maybe.)

Anyway, lots of people around and much reading you can do here.

Please start a system thread in Member systems and show us some pictures of what you got so far!!!!

Welcome RS, you seem to be off to a good start.
Your thread title confused me though. Initially I thought you mean RS Components in transmission. When I realised this was the BYAP forum and not electronics I got very interested.
Welcome, have fun, post heaps of photos and try not to get too addicted!

Thanks for the welcome guy's.......

Kuda, that's kinda funny, because I design PCB's and build up electronics for special projects, and Post about them in a Fourm devoted to that subject.

So it could just as well have been a electronics subject Post............

RS

I got Pic's up in the Members System's thread.

Where are all the Texas PPL.......? I was hoping to have some pop up with some Better than Normal Strain of Tilapia to sell me.

I will call Overton this week for the Catfish, and Tilapia if no one has any that's a better than Normal Strain, or just not any for sell....

Thanks

RS

I have a source in San Diego with Rocky Mountain White tilapia. Not sure re legality in TX.....

PM me if interested. Shipping is expensive, but then you can breed your own...

Are they a Strain of Mossambicus.....? As from what I gather from this fourm and elsewhere, that is the only Tilapia species allowed in Texas, without a exotic Lic. And I dont want to get into that just yet, but maybe someday.............

RS

You might be able to find a good strain of breeders but they are gonna cost you lots. I'm not sure but the cherry snapper web site might be worth a look if you want to spend lots of money on breeders.
http://www.cherrysnapper.com/Species/0.html

Otherwise I would guess that if you put some careful attention into your own breeding program, you could improve some of the run of the mill kind you can get for cheap.

TCL,

I have looked at the cherrysnapper site, and am very impressed.

But the Hornorum or Nitoticus are exotic's in Texas, at some point, once I get more experience, I may get the exotic Lic. and get some of these breeders......

Right now I would like the best Strain of Mossambicus I can find localy, to get started with, and learn on.......

And the Catfish will get to eat the Females and runts

RS

So far my catfish were not very quick at grabbing the babies that got loose this past spring. Then again, my catfish are probably lazy due to getting plenty of food.

Well, maybe the guy at the cherry snapper web site would sell you females that would be legal in your area and you could find your own legal male tilapia to breed with them. Granted you would not be getting the penny fish or anything special like that but you would at least have good female breeding stock to start with so be a little better along in the game rather than just starting with all feeder fish pond stocking type.

Anyway, good luck with finding appropriate fish. Sorry I can't help you but Blue tilapia are the only legal ones here without the permits and such.

A little back ground here. Way, way back in the Day, I worked for a Apartment Management Co. My Boss and I Replumbed and installed new Filters, etc... on several Apartment swimming pools in the DFW area, and he built in some of the features like back flush through the drain, that the system did not have to start with.

So, I applied that kind of Swimming pool setup, like he showed me, to this system.

This system is setup to be able to do several different functions, depending on how the 3 way valves are set, and which knife valves are on or off

Features
Drain select control to adjust the amount of water each drain pulls
Flow from tank drains through biofilter to pump, to outputs
Flow from tank drains to pump, through biofilter, back to tank side port
Flow from tank drains to pump, to outputs, bypassing Biofilter
Flow from tank side port to pump, to outputs, bypassing Biofilter
Back flush tank drains
Drain sluge from bottom of Biofilter barrels, to fawcets, to dirt garden, etc......
Back flush Biofilter from bottom drains to fawcets, to dirt garden, etc.....

About the only thing I did not build into the concrete, is a skimmer, so I may have to build that in, in another way, soon.....

I think i got all the features and info on there and correct

RS

oops i meant for that post to go into the members system therad

I wouldn't bother with the skimmer, it would only suck down food which you want the fish to eat. I don't expect lots of leaves to be falling into your system anyway within the greenhouse unless you hang plants over the fish tank.

well the first thing that my guy did after the tank got full, was to saw up some boards for the steps, and now there is saw dust floating in it, and that reminded me about skimmers, and it could only run as needed.........