Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi everyone!

After reading these forums for a few month I feel like its time to introduce my self.

[url]About me:[/url]I’m Peter from Hungary, husband, father, web project manager. My hobby is my backyard. The smell of dirt it reminds me of my wonderfull childhood summer times on my grand parents ranch, by this helps me to get away from daily stress. Have some dirt garden experience, no experience over fish/fishing, only that I like to cook tham, and I have a friend working for a local commercial fishery!

[url]My road to aquaponics:[/url] We had a lot of rain last summer, hot and wet is perfect placefor powdery mildew, which destroyed my complete dirt garden. My grandparents, has a small greenhouse (3x4m) which support them well, so I started thinking of making a greenhouse. In short time I was searching for pit greenhouses, and possibilities of all year gardening (Read more details of our climate further down.) I read a lot about earhships (earthship.com/), I liked that concept, and was very happy to find the passive solar greenhouse concet: http://www.botanic.org/
http://www.passivesolargreenhouse.com/
http://aes.missouri.edu/bradford/education/solar-greenhouse/solar-greenhouse.php

How ever its not easy to convert everything to metric measures, so it took a while, and I was still hungry for any experience in my climate. So I searched the web for solar greenhouse winter data, suddenly I found web4deb-s winter greenhouse tour. That’s not a passive greenhouse, bat has something called aquaponics. I spent my free time reading about aquaponics.

Hungary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungary

Climate: We have continental climate, hot summer, cold winter, very similar to what Growing Power has.

Temperature ranges from -17C to 35C (1F to95)
January (winter) average temperature: -2,6C (27,3F)
July (summer) average temperature: 20,3C (68F)
The average yearly rainfall is approximately 600 mm (23.6 in)


The goal: My goal is to build a passive solar greenhouse, with aquaponics, to support my family with heathy food and be a test site for possible bigger scale project.

There is hardly any knowledge about aquaponics in hungary, by starting the project I will also start translating aquaponics knowledge to Hungarian.

The system: I found the sources of the materials (mostly recycled), source of fish. As frost leaves I would start building the greenhouse. I will have too cut a tree, but the rest of the site is clear.

- Passive Solar Greenhouse:
Sized 3,6m x 6m, height 3,6m, dug down 0,6m to the ground. The ground helps the smooth ups and downs in weather, and height of 3m above ground also means that I need no permit from the local government to build it.
South facing windows from double layer 10mm Policarbonbate all other sides, and roof insulated. Brick wall in ground also insulated. 2000 liter (530gal) of solar water tank on south wall. Passive air ventilation windows. No heating, no vents!

- Aquaponics:
CHIFT PIST system from IBC tanks.
FT: 1000L (264gal)
ST: 2x 400L (105gal) (One of them can be operated as fish tank as well)
GB: 9x 300L (79gal) Affnan siphon
Media: 16-24mm river stones
Pump: Used heating pump, 3000m2/h (800gal/h)

- Greens and fish: Vegetables that I planted in the dirt garden are also fine with aquaponics. The fish is an other question. Local fish that are happy to live in tanks and nice to eat: trout – the most common tips are available, but im affraig of overheating , capr (Cyprinus carpio) – perfect for tanks, lot of receipts, little bony, wels catfish (Silurus glanis) – nice fish, love tanks, quick growing, tasty perfect . There are some other nice fish to grow but they are slow growing or have cannibalic tendencies.

We don’t have bsf, but I would like to home produce fishfood, so would like try some other methods including worm castings and house fly larve.


I have successfully infected my brother with aquaponic enthusiasm, so he is my main support in the project! Thanks G!


Big size image here: http://www.aquaponics.hu/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/GREENHOUSE2_b.jpg

Help needed:
- I attach the plan of the system, every comment is welcome over that.

- I badly need comments on performance of the solar greenhouse in my climate. I studied architecture, so I made the calculations, but knowing by experience is a different story.


Topics that I read and helped me a lot:

Solar greenhouse, slightly warmer climate than mine, long time no update
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2714

Got to meet molj! He is the closest aquaponics site (7-8 hours of drive)
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2496

Web4deb: greenhouse, about the same climate, and expansion project
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=5098

Lots of information JT’s greenhouse project slightly warmer climate than mine
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=5259

Tristrin’s very similar IBC setup
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=6875

Zsazsa

Welcome to byap, interesting ideas. Looking forward to your build.

Wow, sounds like you have been doing some reading. Never too early to start a system! Look forward to following your progress Zsazsa I think you may be the first from Hungary!

I was about to start cuting the walnut tree and diging the pit for the greenhouse this weekend, but winter fights back, and delaying the start with an other 1-2 weeks.

10cm (4in) snow fel in the last 24 hours, so I have to get back to readnig it, instead of doing it.

I popped in to a local fish merchant, who keeps his fish for sale in IBC-s. He sells carp, and the IBC-s are outside all year round. The temperature now is little bellow freezing for some days now, and his two tanks are not frozen. I was wondering how, so I asked him some questions how they do it.

They keep the water moveing with a pump that also support the airation. They dont filter the water, instead they regularly do water changes form well water ( I aslo have a well, its visible bottom left.). The well water is not more than 10-12C. The carps dont et feed, they are almost hybernated, but at least stay allive in these conditions.

Welcome Zsazsa... looks great - cant wait to see more!

Hi Zsazsa, nice sketchup.

Your sketchup over lay looks almost real. Can't wait to see pics of your build.

Its easy to photoshop when you dont have to mess with the shades.

Your temperatures are not far off from what some of our northern US members deal with. DaveDooley and Web4Deb would be good people to PM regarding greenhouses and temperatures.

Who is DaveDooley? Sounds like a jerk.

Welcome ZsaZsa!

Sorry - Donley! Anyway that guy ^^^^

I have read both topics, they are aprox the same temperature, but passive solar greenhouse is a different story. The keyword here is no heating.

I thought DaveDooley is indoor-outdoor, no greenhouse. (If Im not mistaken...)

Web4Deb's new greenhouse projest will be passive, I'm looking for that

Very nice picture....

You're lucky that you can have carp, I'd love to be able to have them here. Look forward to seeing how they go if you do them.. Oh yes, never trust Dave Dooley..

Maybee you cant have carp but whats wrong with koi

I don't think koi are very edible, but then some people would claim carp aren't very edible.