Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I'm starting this thread at an odd point - I don't have any pictures of my system(s) as they stand at the moment, largely because I've misplaced the seemingly-proprietary USB cable for our camera, so I'm going to backtrack and start with the elements I've acquired but have yet to incorporate into the systems.

At the moment I'm building three systems. Two will hold tilapia (in fact, one already does), and the other will be for freshwater prawns.

Here are some elements:

This is my 1000 gallon tank, when it was on its way to Plano, which I plan on using for the prawns (unless I can't bring myself to cut the top off of it, in which case I'll swap out one of my spare Intex pools - I picked up several off of Craigslist):



The funny thing about this tank is that I got it for free. While driving through an industrial area, I had spotted it sitting on some disused railroad tracks (and until Google Maps updates their pictures of the area, you can still see it here: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=32.934314 ... 1&t=h&z=20 ), and since I had just got my two 500 gallon tanks from the factory right next to the tracks, I asked them what the story on the blue tank was, and what it had once held, and they let me just take it. That was a good day.

Here are the two 500 gallon tanks, from roughly the same location, except these hadn't been thrown on the tracks. Now they're in my back yard, and this picture is from right after my older daughter had scrubbed them out, and I'm debating how best to hook them into my working system, which currently has two IBCs going:



This is my 12,000 gallon tank, or what was to be my "above ground, deep end of the pool", before I broke it. I've documented that bit of stupidity on my part in a different thread. The good news is that I've acquired its twin, so in the next few weeks I get to try again with moving one of these monsters, hopefully sans utter destruction:

These are my two "welded steel frames that would make sturdy greenhouses". They're 17 feet long, about 9 feet deep, and just a fraction over 7 feet tall. I plan on doming the roofs with the semi-circle piping from a few old round trampolines from Craigslist. The frame in back, which is up against the building and lying on its side, has already been dragged out and hauled over to Plano, to join the 1000 gallon tank for our prawn-farm-to-be. That was a hilariously difficult adventure for three middle-aged men to pull off - at night - but there were no significant injuries. The other frame remains at this location, because I don't know what I'm going to do with it, or even more importantly "where", due to the awesome power of the spousal veto.

Made a little more progress over Father's Day weekend!

I hired a neighbor's kid and his friend to bury an IBC tote in my backyard (over which I will be building a new greenhouse, hopefully soon), and they labored all of Friday, getting badly sunburned and blistered, while reaching about half the depth I needed.

So all of Saturday and a good chunk of Sunday I spent in a hot hole with a shovel in my hands, but since I'm not a kid I also employed the secret weapons of "an umbrella" and "a high powered fan", so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I can’t overstress the importance of those two things on a hot Texas June day. Nothing I could do about being an overweight, middle-aged, out of shape guy, which is why the darling offspring is modeling certain items rather than moi.

Here’s the mess, Saturday morning:


The mess, reverse angle:


Half a hole:


To be continued…

The hole, almost ready:


Cage and pallet in place:


Tank in place, filled, buried, and capped with another pallet to keep youngers and dogs from falling in:



Since this will either be my sump, or my "sump with fish" (not sure which yet), I'll be plumbing it from the top.

I'll probably start a new thread for this but with the help of several other people I've kicked off another, much larger, project. Here's the first look:

The 12,000 gallon tank arrives at the Frisco CTE Center:


We're planning on cutting this tank in half, to create two 6000 gallon open-top tanks, which will go under that metal shed in the center of the picture. They will be piped into the greenhouse you see to the right.


Since each of these tanks will be about 7.5 feet tall, we're at least temporarily going to place my portable staircase between the tanks so they can be serviced from either side. Eventually we'll build something permanent, but this will do for now. Note: The stairs are lying on their back in this picture.

Wow. How did I miss this thread. Those tanks are huge.

All the best with your projects.

Hea, it's Looking good

sorry i missed ya Friday, i forgot we had hair cut appointments early that afternoon.....

will get with ya, when we get back........

Wow, this is going to be huge.

I'd still like to see the design(s)?

Not a problem! Sad to miss you, but that happens. Jim & I had a fun talk before I had to rush back north. I hope that piece of plastic I left works out OK, and please give me a buzz when you get back.

Ah, Texas weather!

Well, there's going to have to be some slight design modifications to the big CTE Center system because this evening we had something of a setback. Hey! At least this time it wasn't because of some bone-headed unloading instructions issued by me, you know, like the last time! Instead, good old Mr. Storm played a hand.

You see, after the big tank sat on the school's trailer for a week or so, the staff developed a need to use the trailer for something else. No big surprise there. And they did a MUCH better job unloading it than I did my first time. They even placed it in a parking spot, and put parking curbs against it to chock it into place, and had a bunch of people push on it to make sure it couldn't just roll out of position. See?



Oh wait! Where did it go?

Well, after being off the trailer for less than two hours, we were treated to a brief if exuberant storm. So... Look over there! Yeah, over there to your right. Yeah, there it is!



Gosh, that went a long way. Good thing that light pole was there, or it might well have rolled all the way out to the main road!



OK, maybe that wasn't so fortunate...

Ouch. Drat. Not again!



Well, maybe it isn't too bad, let's look inside...



Ooooooooo.....

Well, although it is briefly bright and sunny, the radio says there's more on the way, so I guess I'd better just tie it off so it can't blow back the other way and end up as confetti.



OK... One brief parking lot replanning session later, and - at least at this moment - the plan is to salvage the base of this one, up to a height of probably around 5 feet or so, and the base of its twin that I broke last year, which will give us at least that much height or more (see also "Uncommon Newbie Mistakes" http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=11064), and rather than use one tank cut into two, we'll just the useable bases of what are now two broken tanks.

A mere hiccup. Progress progresses!

oh bugger

hehehehehe, good to see that you can see the light side of it, otherwise you'd just get upset...

I'm depressed.

Oh well you should still get two decent sized tanks out of it.