Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

What would you guys recommend for insulating the FT? It will be in full son most of the day.

I was thinking shade cloth around the whole thing with a lid then shade cloth over the top of the FT and GB.

I have seem some people use foam and or fire blanket kinda thing, is there 1 thing thats better than the rest?

I suppose the question is why are your considering insulating the tank? I have my tanks in full sun, the walls of the tank have some algae growing but, the water is crystal clear... This is usually the case for most mature systems. And I keep fishes suitable for temperature at that time of the year.

"Why" is always a good question.... I wouldn't bother.

Depends on what you mean by insulation and what you are trying to achieve.

The shade cloth and lids on fish tanks are normally methods of preventing the water from getting too hot (and kids from getting in and drowning ); and preventing too much light getting into the fish tank and causing algal growth.

Using insulation such as a fire blanket, insulation batts etc around a tank or sump is usually a means of preventing water from getting too cold. Burying a tank is also a good way of stabilising overall temperatures throughout the year. However in winter the ground can get very cold so insulating a buried tank from the cold winter ground is a good idea.

I guess what im trying to achieve is to keep the temps in the FT as stable as possible. I have the sump partially buried but FT i cant.

Keep fishes that a suitable for the temperature at that time of the year and have more water (bigger thermal mass more stable water temperatures)

In summer your system should be fine as long as you have some means of preventing too much light getting into the tank and also stopping the water from getting really hot. Shade cloth is the easiest

Insulating the sump would help in winter to prevent the water chilling off. Insulating the sides of the above ground tank is probably not going to help much with heat loss in winter but a lid of some sort would because heat rises up Cool room panels are good but even a lit made out of timber would be adequate.

i deleted my reply on this early today, when its hot, insulation wrapped around a tank will not keep the water cooler because it will hold in the heat that builds up from the day. cooler night time temps would not be able to cool it back. as for keeping it warm pond deicers work very well for me. our fish tanks have a spray system for water return from the filter pumps. we turn the sprayers off during daylight hours to keep from picking up heat, and use them at night to help cool the water a little.

Other things you can do is stick it on a big thermal mass like a concrete slab. I've often wondered what these tanks would look like with a drystone wall around them.

I have my tank on the concrete slab under the carport. It's covered (rupe did an experiment several years ago that revealed just covering your tank can make about 5 degrees difference), and the concrete slab adds that extra bit of thermal mass meaning temps don't swing so much. Being in the shade makes a huge difference to temperatures - however you kind of want the sunshine in the winter.

I wonder what would a "wall" of bessa blocks around it would do

How do people cook their tanks? (other than build the FT out of a freezer )

you mean cool? shade and fine mist spray would be the best bet, grow beds would heat the water faster than mechanicly cooled systems would work. sort of like sitting in front of an a/c unit outside in the yard it would blow some cool but just waste energy. we use very large cooling units(4 tonn and 2 of them to boot) and pay heavy electric bills cooling our bait tanks....and in the end mother nature wins. thats without pumping thru a warm grow bed.

Yah, don't fight it. Work with it. You can do things like not pump during the day, pumping all night during summer, and then reversing that during winter.

As long as you have enough oxygen... and sufficinet filtration capacity to catch up later...

i Cladded my IBC With colorbond Sheet, so i put some R32 Insulation batts around the outside of it and underneath to hold temps more stable as steel amplifies Heat & cold and i was worried about the rapid temp swings.

Temps seem to move gradually, also have a shadehouse over my Growbeds, and they are protected by being up against a brickwall, so frost doesn't make it down there.

Full Northan facing and the tank is on the south side of the shadehouse so it doesn't get full sun until late at night and only for a hour or so.

and agree with everyone else here, run the fish that work well with your area, after you run your system through a season, and get an idea on water temps in respect to ambient temps you will be able to plan seasons and work out when to start/finish fish and maybe plan for a smaller fingerling tank so you can overlap seasons to get the most out of your fish.

There has been a few new people on lately talking about research that they want to do. Studying the heat exchange capabilities of gravel beds would then give those of us who like to dabble with the science of ap some figures to do the engineering on cooling and heating systems for ap.

Ps I am trying really hard to be an artist but I'm still a scientist.