Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

This is my awesome husband, Todd. I made that sign for him ages ago for when we hatched a batch of 25,000 trout eggs. We didn't have enough water and had no concept of AP at that time, so had pretty much given up on ever raising trout again, since our property only has a stream that is tiny in the Winter and our well is low gpm and 550 ft deep, so not economical at all to try to raise trout traditionally. But the experience was great, trout are so fun. We took the ones we raised successfully up to his grandfathers.
His grandfather raised trout as a business and so my husband has always wanted to raise them. Thanks to AP, I do not think there will be much keeping that from happening. Other than I volunteered to dig the BIG hole) I wish his grandfather was still alive, he would have loved AP.
I nearly tossed the sign multiple times, but now glad I didn't. Don't tell him, but I would pay almost any amount to see him smile like that.
You can also see the wood stove is installed. It works awesomely.


Here is the pile of 20 barrels for our grow beds waiting to be cut up. I love the fog in the background. You can see just a bit of my dirt garden fence in the distance.


Yay, first one cut and looks like the perfect size for our racking. Which also yay, the other half of the racking is up and leveled. We had exactly enough uprights. Well... one short, but had four 2 ft pieces left over, so the husband welded 3 together for one of the uprights for the wood stove, its working great.

In last post should have been stated 10 barrels, not 20, is 20 halves.

Last night we got 12 half barrels plumbed, holes cut and PVC threaded in and deburred them from cutting them.
The greenhouse is filling up quickly, hopefully it won't be too much more full than it is currently.
Tonight I believe we will be attaching all the grow beds together and if there is time, they may get their plumbing finished. But that could be more optimistic than reality.


This is how the greenhouse looks from the outside in the dark. Will look a little bit different now with more grow beds in.


I still need to put together my worm/BSFL feed through system in there. I have dedicated one entire pallet rack to it. I have raised red worms for years and probably have several hundred pounds of them, so I want to move a portion of them into the greenhouse and have them work under the BSFL. Everything I have read suggests that they cannot live together, but from what I know of the worms that I have worked with, I think that maybe I can make it work. I have plenty of feed for them and my worms always do best in the Winter from the heat. So we will see. I think the key to this working will be the size of the bed. It will be 8 ft long x 3 ft wide x 2ft deep. The worms should have plenty of area to escape from the heat of the BSFL. I will be beyond excited if the BSFL will reproduce in the greenhouse this Winter.
We will see. I will post photos as it comes together, though I do not expect it to get a lot of attention until after our initial wet run this weekend. I figure I will be looking for any excuse to stop washing gravel for a while.
Have a fantastic day!

We got 4 of the barrels attached, but then ran out of washers and will have to postpone until we make a trip to the hardware store.
But other than the two pieces at the ends, it came together really nice. Now just to repeat the process another 4 times.



And thanks for the info Decal. I really like how helpful everyone here is.

Night everyone!

Your welcome, really enjoying watching the journey!

Beth

How do you plan to plumb it all up? As in inlets and outlets etc?

You guy's don't muck about.....great work

Nice work! Another west coast APer I see. When I get around to building a greenhouse I will have to ask you for more info on how you did it. The weather here in the Bay area is not so extreme that I need one, but having one would be nice to extend the growing season.

Coming together nicely you guys, great work

Thanks! Me too, its really exciting watching it come together.



In our grow beds we have that plumbed with 1 inch pipe. Both the inlet and the outlets. Outside the grow beds, they are connected, with a drain over each of the fish tank troughs.
The sump my father in law gave us is serious overkill at 2700 GPH, so we will be diverting most of that off for making current with only a small portion going to the grow beds.
The tanks we are using as our sumps and fish tanks are 100 gallon water troughs. They are currently being used for our horses and already have a large goldfish living in each one, so we will trying to not disturb them very much as we move them into the system to get a little jump start on cycling. They have housed fish for years.
The drain plug is 1 1/4" and so the fish tanks will be tied together through these, as will be the sumps, There will be a larger pipe up higher on one of the fish tank troughs that overflows into the sump tanks. I do not recall what size we planned it to be at this moment, there is many pipes in my life at this moment.
We will be running it without any fish or gravel for a bit to make sure everything works as we hope and make any modifications to get things balanced. Hopefully there will not be any major overflows anywhere.
I hope this is what you were asking me, if not, please ask again.



Thanks gnash!
I do confess to be one of the type of people if I spend too long thinking about something it gets so over thought that nothing happens, and so have found that it is better to act quickly, even if I make a mistake than to wait.
I am in hopes I have read enough already to have avoided the big mistakes, but am trying to look at this set up as a test one to learn from, so will hopefully not take anything to personal if it all goes badly. hehe
I am more about the plants than the fish, and I know I can grow at least one goldfish in a trough, so...how many plants do you think one goldfish can feed?
I am just kidding, I hope.
Thanks again.



Thanks! I am happy to answer any questions you have about the greenhouse when you are ready.
I still have only verily sampled the member systems. Are there many AP people on the West coast?
We are at about 1100 ft, so we get snow an average of about 15 times each year, though most is the gone by lunch type. But occasionally we do get 3 ft that freezes solid for 3 weeks kind sometimes as well. I much prefer the gone by lunch time kind, looks pretty at breakfast and doesn't get in the way for the rest of the day. But your weather would be nicer, but love the way Oregon looks, we have lived here pretty much our entire lives. But we would like to retire in Hawaii someday. I think AP would be awesome there. I wonder if I can figure out how to afford that without selling my current house?
Then maybe we could snowbird, tilapia there, trout here....dream dream


Thank you abdul!
I can't wait to see if it works.
My experimental tank is holding about 60 degrees, I am wondering if when the others are there if the temp will hold around there also or will hold higher or lower due to the larger mass of water? Or if the temp swing will still be about 10 degrees overnight? So many questions waiting to be answered that I have to wait for time and experience to understand.
Thanks again. I hope things continue to come together well.

No new photos at this moment. We made it to the hardware store though and so got the washers (and a load of other little things) though maybe we forgot to get the overflow pipe that goes from the fish tank to the sump. Maybe that is why I can't remember what size it is.
I will take some photos later today. I am not entirely sure if it will be running water or not yet though. So I guess we will see.
Thanks again and again, I feel very welcome here, I look forward to reading about everyone's systems. Hopefully more time for that once things are set up?

I was thinking that was some damm hot water for a few sec's
Then I realised you meant Fahrenheit!
I've found my big tank holds the temps well, air temp from 24 degC to 11degC last night.
The tank probe had a low of 18.1degC.
I pump 24/7 which probably speeds up the temp change too.

Make sure you make make it so the fish can't get into the overflow pipe Beth, thats a mistake you don't want to make

Totally, no mucking about there, jump right in and get to building. Great work.

The overflow from the fish tanks to the sump tanks should be big.

Actually you may find that the shared drain or connection plumbing hooking the barrels together might want to be larger but that is hard to tell before seeing what the water flow does.

Just remember that if you are pumping water under pressure through some size pipe, the gravity drain plumbing for that container should probably be larger than the inlet plumbing.

Keep up the good work and don't get your feet to wet when you test out the siphons (yea ya gotta get your feet a little wet, it's kinda like a right of passage along with washing gravel and taking pictures of toes )

i bet those goldies get a fright when the horse comes fro a drink!
nice systems forming there guys
will be good to watch the progress

lol I forget that you are probably just like me when I read a lot of your posts I have to rethink the numbers. Sorry about that, hope you don't mind my giggles at reading your post.
I have never thought in Celsius prior to coming here, nor liters, I found a conversion website for myself and should try to remember to include both. Hopefully I will start being able to think in both soon so I do remember to post both.

This is awesome news! Thank you so much. I really look forward to this.
The only thing I don't look forward to at this time is needing to keep the greenhouse door closed more as the weather gets colder, it becomes a lot like a rain forest after about 3-4 days with only the one tank in there if I don't open the door to let it dry out. I wonder how it will be with more tanks?
Every gust of wind sends a shower. Though I probably needed another shower.
Thanks again.

Might have to figure out how to install some automatic vents and fans in the ends to help with the humidity.