Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Yep agree with the others - that's a pretty awesome set up - well done

I like those tilapia fish tanks!

Glad you guys like it!

I've been out of town all week at a Cornell University RAS short course taught by some of the greatest minds in aquaculture. We've even got a guy from Tasmania that flew in for it. Soooooo much valuable information on mass balancing, engineering and system design.

We visited a 50 million dollar yellow perch operation yesterday (designed by freshwater institute) that was mind blowing. The tanks were 30-35' diameter, 10ft deep (70,000gal each I believe) and it took a 2 acre building to hold 6 (including filtration, pumps etc)!!! I mean... I'm still a bit in awe. Very well laid out farm... brood stock facilities, hatchery, grow out, research and they have a processing facility down the road. They're (bell aquaculture) starting a build on a new 4 acre building that should be in operation by 2016 with an estimated production of 36,000 metric tonn per year. Like I said....crazy. Steve Summerfelt and Brian Vinci are doing the bulk of the teaching and I would highly recommend it if you're looking to do this for a living.

I'll be back at it next week when I'm home so until then my friends...

I love your pictures Ryan

Nice set up. Where did you get those fish tanks with the viewing window from? How many gallons are they?

Thx Faye

Jaya- they are 1500gal custom tanks from one of our fiberglass manufacturers (not a stock AES item but I think they can still get them)

I'm getting a truckload of lumber dropped off this weekend so that I can start building the fish barn. I'm hoping to get the vertical posts set and some of the connecting 2" x 6" boards up by Sunday. We have a tropical storm sitting off of our coast so not sure how much I will get done but we'll see. This is the 2nd big tropical storm(winds up to 60mph) the greenhouse has been through and she's solid as a rock.

Wow, can I ask what kind of budget all this was done on? Kudos to the super ambitious project!

Ryan, did you go to school in Florida (if at all)? Or did you go straight into your job in Clermont?

Thx Feltzm
I'd rather not keep going into costs for everything. My current budget is "buy what you need". The system will start running pretty basic but I will be adding water monitoring equipment, alarms, purge tanks, camera's etc and will be building several other small structures (cooler, processing room, dry storage, etc). I've also got room for 3 more full GH's until I have to call my grader to flatten some more land. Seeing how I already have all of the produce and fish sold that will be produced in GH1, GH2 won't be far off...

Samual- yes I went to UCF and studied Micro/molecular biology minoring in chemistry, then started at my current job right out of school (which has pretty much been 7.5 yrs of continued education focused on aquaculture).

I guess numbers isn't what I should ask, but rather are you personally funding this project or did you get funding from somewhere else? I'm planning my first system right now and I don't feel so ambitious after seeing this enormous project you're working on Lol.

And where/who did you order the greenhouse kit from?

Either way, kudos on the system that I think looks professionally done.

I'm funding the project myself, no investors (or I would have water flowing by now!)
The GH came from Growers supply.

My lumber won't be delivered until monday afternoon so no progress on the barn this weekend. I went ahead and marked the corners so I am ready to set the posts when they arrive.

Good filtration = healthy plants

A giant F&D bed I'm setting up on a seperate system:


The lumber for my fish barn just got dropped off. Now I have to carry it all 50yards to a rack I made inside the greenhouse...I think I might melt...


My birthdays on Sunday and my 4 day weekend starts now so it's going to be a weekend of barn building and flats fishing! Wish me luck!

Good luck Ryan!!

Good luck indeed.

Harden up... ya wuss...