Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

The structure is about 18 ft. long x 9 ft. wide.

These are the walls going up. The North wall has a small insulated window, in the winter it will be covered by styrofoam, in the summer we can sit and watch the fish from outside.

The men building the grow house are: Dany Lajeunesse and Willy Hill, from the Deep Northern town of Kirkland Lake, Ontario, Canada. They worked hard, I gave them a hard time but they came back and finished the job. Dany is a carpenter and musician, and Willy is attending university of Toronto and traveling to Mexico to work on some organic farms, if I recall correctly. They followed my instructions and any fault with the grow house lies with the designer, and not with their work.

Here are some pictures of the fiberglass and plywood walls going up:

There are some rooftops quite close by, and some structures such as a very tall pole and a tall 15 ft frame where grapes are growing, I'm looking to add solar panels and maybe a water heater to help get the shelter off grid and reduce the use of supplementary heating and lighting.

The shelter is now painted, has the polycarb roof installed, it's wired and I'm setting up the fish tank. Next up is to finish sealing the base and finish painting the outside. to insulate and seal off the West door, and install the eavestrough, and put in flooring. I'm not actually sure if I'll get to the growbeds this year, there is still a lot of finishing work to do, maybe that will come in the spring, we'll see. It might be good to just pack in water and cement blocks for mass, and wait and see how this survives the winter.

I'll be piping in air from a compressor in the garage. The existing insulated door has a window for ventilation. I think I'll need to add another small air intake, vent and fan, I need to figure out the exact equipment needed to turn the air over sufficiently in the middle of winter to avoid mold and mildew, but without letting all the hot air out at once. There's also the question about how air tight this structure is. The walls are sealed with vapour barrier, the connection to the floor will be sealed and the doors will be tightly insulated. There may be a few small gaps that need to be plugged yet where the polycarb roof meets the spruce frame, but it hasn't leaked inside yet despite numerous heavy rain falls. I thnk the structure if going to be quite air tight and I will have control over air flow.

I'm hoping to get the fish tank in place and filled tomorrow.

Earlier conversation re drilling holes in glass:


It works really well! I just bought drill bits from http://www.glass-holes.com/Glass-Hole-Cutters_c7.htm for only about $15 each for a 1.75" and 3" (about 45mm and 76mm), used a slow speed (about 2rps) and a ply guide and had a friend run a hose on it and 2 minutes later had a clean hole in 1/4" (6mm) aquarium glass! A few chips off the back of the glass, but seems good so far!

Sorry for the hijack....

Well I meant to update this thread sooner but there has been a lot of things going on.

The fish are inside and warm for the winter, the tank is insulated with styrofoam to R10 insulation with R20 lid inside the insulated room, the floor is partially insulated and I'm still cutting styrofoam and would like to have the tanks and floor completely R20. No grow beds yet. I keep meaning to take photos. It's just a big styrofoam box, really.

It's snowed a number of times and although most of Jan has been unseasonably warm (above freezing during the day) there were some times when it dipped to -15 d C and the condensation inside on the roof froze and so on but the tank was kept toasty warm. I'm sure I'd have a big problem with frost build up but I have a temporary dehumidifier in there, and the whole system is wrapped in plastic, so much of the condensation builds up on the plastic and condenses and drips down,, the air inside is not so humid. Whenever it's above freezing the growhouse inside seems to be room temp or above and the heater does go off during the day, at night the air does cool down. I mean to put in a automated insulated curtain of some type to trap the warm air for the night. My electric bill has gone up noticeably for the last month but not too bad; I don't think I would want to be trying to make a profit with this system as it is, though. I need to calculate and monitor these costs more exactly, there are tenants in this property and I don't know, they may very well have plugged in an electric heater as well. I think I will continue to try to cut down running costs through insulation and solar, and very likely next year stick to catfish and cold water vegetables in winter.

I'm still really playing with ideas for a sump, I keep changing my ideas of how the layout should be. I think I may start with a few more experiments instead of going straight to my end goal. I've got some 20 gallon barrels and would like to build a better filter and build a few small insulated growbeds, maybe I can rig a way to put them directly over the tank and maximize grow bed space... I have several ideas and am having trouble choosing. I think I'll start with these small 20 gallon growbeds/barrels. I like the idea of using the barrels as is without cutting them up much, they come with handles and could be fairly easily portable if necessary and maintained I think.


Also as it happens several of the first community aquaponics initiatives (to my knowledge) in Toronto, ON are starting up and I've been in touch with several of these non profits. As they proceed I'll maybe start up threads on those initiatives and post photos of progress. These developments are a very pleasant surprise and I'm very interested to see how they work out. Also, there has been a green roof law passed in Toronto, any building being built over four stories is required to have a green roof. There may be an interest in greenhouses, and a subset of these people may be interested in aquaponics. I honestly didn't really expect much interest in Canada because of the winter, but I would be delighted to be proved wrong. We shall see.

Very nice. You might consider getting a kill-a-watt meter to find out just how much power you are using. Then again, maybe not. *grin*

A huge amt of heat loss is due to evaporation, so whatever you can do to reduce that is good. I agree that getting fish that require no extra heat is key. Cooling is possible through evaporation (depending on climate), but heating is a killer.

Hello friendly fish people,

I've been slow to come out of hibernation after the winter. We had a mild winter, almost no snow, now suddenly we are in very hot weather for this time of year in Toronto with temps nearing a high of around 30 C during the day and going down to around 20 C at night.

Here are some photos of what I've managed so far; it's not very tidy but it's very much a work in progress.

I've just moved some seedlings into the growbeds for the first time. I picked a very hot day and I'm worried that I wasn't very kind and some of them will die. Some of the net pots have extra wide black rims that get hot (duh); that's why there's a scattering of styrfoam to shade the rims of the pots until I either cut them down to size or make a better shade.

more pictures

more pictures...

I made a little ramp, with the idea that my bichir fishes will behave as they do in the wild, where they climb the riverbanks at night and hunt for insects and worms. I haven't moved them into this tank yet because I need to build a tight fitting screen enclosure to keep the bichir escape artists from running wild in the streets.

I've put in a wireless thermometer in the grow house; it communicates with a digital display in the kitchen where I can monitor the temperature in the grow house and go and make adjustments if there are any problems.

I have timers for fans but right now I'm just leaving it all running 24/7 because it's hot; right now it's 3:23 pm and it's 35 C in the growhouse, 28 C in the house, and maybe 29 outside. The sun will start moving off the grow house at around 5:30 and the temp will start dropping immediately, by midnight it will probably drop to around 21 C with the fans running. I need to add more shade panels, it's going to be hotter in a month.

The outside North wall has a window in front of the fish tank; I'm going to cut a hole in the cotton drop cloth covering that wall on the inside and remove the styrofoam from the North of the tank; I'll put some lights on a timer and at night there will be a few hours where you can watch the fish at night.

Inside I have some more tomatoe and marigold seedlings in case I kill what's outside; I want to start some radishes and other things.

I have another large tank inside that I have to shoehorn into the grow house and a bunch of 55 gallon and 20 gallon barrels that I hope to fashion into decent grow beds; I may also add a large diameter pipe style growbed along the back wall and some hanging planters, all in good time.

Good to see your progress there Humanfly, makes me appreciate our rather more mild climate here in Aus...

One simple comment about the styrofoam to shade the rims of plant pots - it's probably not necessary. Before coming to Toronto I lived in a place where the temperatures would go as high as 40 C. The plants survived just fine (as long they as they had enough water)

Hi Dennis!

I think you're quite right, however the temp sensor is in the shade on the North wall so it's a fair bit hotter in the growbeds; also it was only an issue because the seedlings were so small some of the smaller ones went limp after the transplant and were touching the edges of the pot, where they touched the plant shriveled and curled up. The bigger ones had no issues. I think everyone will live.

I've found some aluminum foil and wrapped the rims a bit, as you say I don't think it's really necessary but I figure more light can't hurt.

cheers

The zucchinis suddenly got dry. I'm not sure exactly why, some of the leaves went a bit yellow and then started drying right out and curling. It got a bit cool for a few days, maybe down to 16 C in the growhouse at night. I took off one of the blue plastic sheets, for two reasons: to let more light in during the day so it would warm up, and because the plants looked a bit leggy as if they weren't getting enough light. There was plenty of light, but I think they don't like blue light. I'm going to try to get some shade cloth up so they still get light, just not blue. I don't know why they dried out, it was peaking at around 30C during the day. I'm also going to put a shield around the roots, naturally the fish are trimming them, that could be the problem? They like tomatoe and zucchini roots but not yams; perhaps I should take the yams out? I hope they don't poison the fish or something.

I got a new delivery of fish: 17 bright eyed dinner pets. They're inside for now. I'll try to take some photos.

I've sown some yellow beans and radishes inside. and more zucchini, just in case.

ok so two whole years have passed. Was too busy to make many changes to the set up for much of that time. I finally got around to an upgrade the growbeds, I've put in a flood and drain and the testing went well. I'm really behind this year and there isn't much growing. I'm hoping to get a second growbed installed soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPE9l6SWO9s&feature=plcp