Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

OK, so I have some news to tell and also I find myself in need of help from the all of the people on this forum. A little background on me - I am a high school teacher of Biology, Environmental Science, and Physics as a mid-size private school in Dallas, TX. Since I started at this school, I have been working to convince my superiors that the creation of an comprehensive Aquaponics program would be a great thing for our students...

Well I just got the work yesterday that we are moving forward with this. So here is the deal, I have support from all appropriate parties. We are now at the phase where the formal proposal needs to be written and presented to the Board of Directors. While I have explained the concept fully to the people I have talked to, it seems that the Board is going to want a written formal proposal that includes a budget, site design schematic and usage plan. Well I have the usage plan completed, I have been told to "shoot the moon" in my proposed budget.... Meaning I am going to write this as if money is no object. (Well in truth, maybe as if it were a small relatively minor object.)

So here is where I need your help -- I need some help designing this system. I will be the first to admit that I am very much a newcomer to the whole idea of AP. I have a basic working idea of how things go together and what they will encompass for a large system... But as the school will want this pretty much designed to the hilt BEFORE it is built, I currently find myself out of my element.

Current Constraints:
Total Space designated for the program: 20 ' x 20' (it will be on top of a concrete slab - a.k.a a portion of the school parking lot)
Proposed Greenhouse: 14' wide x 10' tall x 16' long (Single door in middle of the 14' side)

I would like to have the entire system inside the greenhouse, but it might be possibly to have an external fish tank. The difficulty with that is that temps will get down to the low 30's F on a regular basis and below freezing is quite common for short periods of time... Another difficulty is that I need this to be a TEACHING space. That means that I need to be able to get at least 10, but preferably 20 students inside this greenhouse at a time.

We will be raising tilapia and basic vegetables / herbs. All produce raised will be donated / sold in order to provide food and monies to local charities. We currently plan to breed our own tilapia inside the school in another system... (Set up at a later date)

Initial questions:
1. Do I need to ask for a bigger greenhouse? With a completed system running, will I be able to have my class inside at the same time?
2. I have estimated about $5000 to build the system from scratch - I do want to use recycled/repurposed materials. But I am not opposed to buying new if needed. I would like to have a system where I can tell my kids to "MacGuyver" a solution based on materials at hand...


So here is my situation... I need your help. All designs will be considered, and all people who collaborate on this with us will be recognized in all of our materials. Thanks in advance for the help that you can give. I am going to xpost this on Practical AP and the DIY aquaponics forums to hopefully get a greater audience.

Green Phoenix

Depends on what materials, growbeds etc you use. You can keep it fairly compact by doing doing similar to the below.


Stolen from Backyards main site. The growbeds are approx 6.5' by 4' if my imperial conversion is right.
Perhaps a row of bathtubs or similar size down the sides and something like that center?

CHIFT PIST
One of THESE for the fish tank, in a corner opposite the door. Set on the ground.

A 300-gallon Rubbermaid Stock Tank (RMST) buried next to it, if completely buried then part of the FT and one of the GBs can overlap over the sump.

Three RMSTs for GBs distributed around the rest of the greenhouse, on blocks. This gives a 2:1 filtration, some breathing room so a GB can be disconnected and serviced or refribbed without having to rush.
Leave two feet to the wall and three feet between GBs for stand-around space. Looks like 18 students and a couple of faculty / guest lecturers could fit in with some elbow room...

Dual standpipes in the GB bottoms, one GB could be siphoned, one passive drained, one convertible or FLOUTed. Gotta be able to experiment.
This setup will need a 4-port sequencer, the "Turtle" could fill the GBs one at a time with a port left over.

I see a 3X3 space left next to the door... that'll be needed for something. Duckweed tank? Potting bench? Workstation?

Tanks and Turtle look like about $1500. Add pump, piping and the greenhouse itself...

Oh yeah, Expanded Shale, 5 cubic yards, say 6 ('cause you have to screen out the fines) at ~$400 (not sure about delivery fees).
If you do this, I'll donate a RMST growbed.

Rick

This One is shorter and would work better for the FT actually.
Many good ones at that vendor.

I like the layout for this system. If this were done with only one grow bed along one side (instead of two like pictured) it would probably work well for "teachable space".



This came from JTs system thread.

Hea there,

Glad to hear that everyone at the school is on board....

as you have now seen my greenhouse and how tight it is, a bigger green house would be much better........

your $5000 estimate is prob bare minimum, depending on how much ya can use recycled/repurposed materials, and what the GH it's self is built out of, and how big ya end up making it........

put all your tilapia FT's inside the GH, and then put a lot of GB's outside for the summer Mo's

a tilapia grow out FT outside would work for the summer, and then could have Channel Cats in it during the winter to keep the outside GB's going with cold weather veggies......

and dont forget about heating the GH FT water for the Tilapia......

Go bigger on the greenhouse if you can. Use your full 20' by 20'. If you can't do it all in one "greenhouse" perhaps you have a separate fish tank room added but since you are talking about tilapia I would try to make it all one big space since you don't want to loose space to walls.

With the larger space you can do one big system or perhaps have multiple smaller systems to be able to run experiments.

Or perhaps start out with a single smaller system so your students can get involved in the design of the additional experiments. I don't know how best to write a budget proposal for such a thing though. Perhaps you should pick Aquamad's brain as I think his students have built many systems in his classes.

There are so many options, it is hard to suggest a "perfect" design for an educational situation, it so depends on the situation.

I think Nates towers might be handy for growth experiments on different fast growing plant types during the school year. I would probably also want some grow beds online though to tide the filtration over between experiments.

That is kinda the biggest challenge for a school system. Does it get attention over the weekends? Holidays? What sort of backup protection will it have in case of power fail? Tampering?

Good Luck with it.

Oh, yea and channel catfish are an option that can run year round without supplemental heating. Tilapia are handy for being able to breed them on site but that is about the only recommendation they get from me.