Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi,

I'm from Belgium and thinking about setting up an aquaponics system in a greenhouse some time next year. My first priority is finishing the house and moving to the new house, which will hopefully happen in january, but once that's done I want to setup the greenhouse and start the aquaponics system.

I have been thinking about what it will look like, and have some vague plans that I'm trying to draw out with my minimal google sketchup skills.
What I'm thinking about is a 4.5 by 3 meter greenhouse, with a small cellar of about 1 - 1.5 m deep for the fish and sump tanks. On the ground level would be the grow beds on elevated frames. Having the fish and sump tanks and all the pumps and most of the pipes underground and invisible is mainly to keep my girlfriend happy, and also to maximize the space for the growbeds.
I'm hoping to have some heat storage tanks inside the greenhouse to keep the temperature stable and high enough to at least grow something in winter, but am not sure yet if that will work well.

The tanks I'll be using will most likely be IBC's, but I'll probably have to construct some wooden casing to make it look less industrial and fit into our garden.


I have been searching the forum for other people with experience in Belgium, but haven't found any active members so far that have a system setup, if there are any, I'm interested in their experiences.

Regards,
Q

Struisje is an active member in Belgium, I know from experience that she's willing to help beginning enthusiasts.

Good luck!

Thanks, will (try to) get in contact with her.

HIM

Sorry about that, the post I was replying to seemed to refer to you as 'her'.

I get peoples gender wrong all the time. I have to start checking better.

Ok, so I finally got started with building my first system.
I reduced the size quite a bit to what I initially was thinking about. Mainly to not upset the wife to much :-)


Here's some pictures of the first few steps. More coming soon.

Some more work done in the last few days.
Next steps : painting and getting fish in there.

Painted and cleaned up the system.
I added 3 goldfish yesterday, but they had disappeared completely this morning. I blame cats. I think I'll need to put a cover over the fish tank.

Why don't you wait for the nitrogen cycle to kick up, speeding the process by periodically adding very small amounts of fish food into the fishtank, before adding fishes?

There are a few reasons for that. Most important one is my impatience and my son continuously asking for fish after I told him there would be fish. The other reasons are me not knowing enough about cycling and not having spent the time to read up on it.

50 percent of my water comes from my mom's pond that has about 50 goldfish in it, the other half is from my rain water reservoir. Do you think it's necessary to really take readings? I was planning on just seeing what happens, and only follow a more scientific process if this approach fails.

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