Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Thanks for chiming in, Coach! I haven't read through your system description yet. I take it you follow Lennard's guidelines?

I meant to ask earlier: Where'd you get your fish?

Jim, good morning.

Freshwater Fish Company
info@freshwaterfishco.com
www.freshwaterfishco.com[freshwaterfishco.com]

These guys have 2 locations south of Sacramento. Once a month they open to the public for us small scale (scale, hah!) hobbyists.

The people are great, fish seemed healthy/high quality, and prices are right.

Hi JimV and welcome,

Like your towers.

Can you share more info, how you made them, how long you've been using them.....etc.

Thanks for the welcome, Bob! But I don't have a system yet. Maybe it's @AquaNate you're thinking of?

Awesome, thanks Nate! There's no way I'll have a system ready by their next public sale day, but I've subscribed to their list so I'll catch them next time. I will probably start my system with mosquitofish anyway, and I think I can get those for free from the Sacramento/Yolo vector control district.

I'll be getting my fish from the same company on the 14th!

Steve, congratulations on getting fish into your system. You're doing the Intex pool right? Don't let anyone run with scissors back there!

Jim, yep, Vector Control will be happy to provide free mosquito fish. I think I remember them being more seasonally available, but that should be coming along shortly.

Found this website and started reading. Very existing. Been researching for two weeks. I'm starting my first aquaponics system. Starting to gather all materials for a IBC type system. Any suggestions on how to keep FT cool in the California summer? I'm going to put it in a 10 x 20 greenhouse I purchase at Harbor Freight. I was thinking of doing a geothermal setup to keep water cool. Any suggestions? Probably easier to just put tank in the ground but not sure how cool that will make it.

AquaSenior, good morning.
I've only been at this for a year and a half, but I'll put in my two cents for now until someone more experienced comes along.
If your fish tank is shaded, you really won't have to worry about preventing overheating.
Partially burying the tank will help insulate and minimize temperature swings.

Geothermal huh?
I imagine you could pump water through a buried sump or series of pipes, but if you contain both the fish tank and grow beds in a green house I think you'd have accomplished the same goal more simply.

If your growbed is outside in ambient air, it'll be such a heat sink that you'd have to dump way too much energy into heating or cooling.

My tank is sort of insulated, fairly well shaded, and the entire system sits outside. Things got pretty cold over winter, everyones' metabolism slows down, but catfish and bluegill survived the cold. In the summer, the tank gets into the 70's which rev's up the fish, but doesn't get hotter than that.

Welcome and best of luck!

Welcome, AquaSenior! What part of NorCal do you call home?

The first thing I was going to do with my system was record high and low water temps for a year, to see what sorts of fish might thrive. Now feeling kinda stupid for not just asking you, Nate, seeing as you have over a year's worth of data already.

Cool, finally starting to pay back the forum for everything I've learned here.

Time for a Sacramento system tour one of these days!

Sounds great! Probably not 3/14, since everybody (except me, ) will be buying fish.

Good call. I'm not sure what kind of schedule others are on as far as frequency of buying new fish. I'd think 1 purchase in Spring would be about right, so they might have a big day of it, being mid March.

Since my system is out of balance (overstocked fish tank for the grow bed volume) I scaled back on feeding quite a bit last summer and fall. Which leads me to now, with one year old fish I hope get to harvest size by this summer.

Wish I could buy fish every month from them, they're great to talk to and are willing to talk about their operation, good stuff.

I'm in Salida right above Modesto. I just picked up a IBC tote for $60.00 I have chance to pick a few more in a couple of weeks. Everything will be in the greenhouse. It's 10 x 12 for now I will expand later. With second greenhouse I can remove back wall and connect together have two sliding doors on both sides. Each 10 x 12 has four roof vent that will open and close automatically when temp goes up or down. The walls and roof are a polycarbonate panel. I should be able to cut a wall down low and put in a louvered vent for cross ventilation. How many GB could I put on one IBC FT? Before getting out of balance with proper bacteria?