Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Having a massive amount of water in a building helps to moderate the temperature a lot but that is only useful if the average ambient temperature is what you want.

For me I've got relatively cool temperatures but even so a big part of what allows me to get trout through summer even in the greenhouse is that I've got a big system with a lot of water. While that gets me through summer without needing to actively cool it does mean I'm kind of at the mercy of winter temperatures. Once things get cold they stay cold. Adding insulation would draw out the temperature swings but once things get cold due to the turn of the season they will stay cold until spring.

In your case like in mine insulation will help by getting your system through the extremes but it doesn't help overcome the overall trend. In my summer I'm only really worried about 10 days of the year. The worst year was 5 hot days and hot nights in a row. Other years is only two or three in a row several times. In such situations the thermal mass and insulation of the system gets your through but sooner or later if a heat wave extends trouble arises unless I was to resort to active cooling.

In your case I imagine you would be growing a warm water fish which means that a cold snap or extended period or overcast weather would be your problem but you are likely to face the bigger problem that the periods of sunshine are not enough to warm the system up again. In winter I can see your system not getting really cold but still be too cold for tilapia

I guess Ryan will advise on that in his workshop. If you do insulate you want a way of bringing heat in or out through the insulation having the ability to do that gives you a lot more control. For example being able to bring heat in while it is sunny during the day or get heat out during the cool of the night means that you have more control.

Question, without some type of greenhouse film for cover. How do you keep rain from flooding your system and loosing the nutrients? In Central FL, we commonly get torrential downpours (sometimes daily). With so much planting area square footage, being able to collect the rain. It seems like a problem I will have to factor in.

Well I've got a greenhouse over mine but I'm currently working on a system that would be outdoors.

Average rainfall in the area I'm looking to build it is ~750mm pa. Rainfall is going to be an issue.

At this stage my approach is to have the system overflow to storage for later system use and/or irrigation to field crops.

Stu,

Where the system will be built we get about 2 weeks of weather too cold for the tilapia. Usually with some warm days mingled in. If I had to. If I started soon enough I could use a wood burning stove to get me through. With the right insulation. In extreme situations, the FH could be decoupled. From the mineralization and GB loop, to act as a RAS. Thereby conserving, the precious heated water. I am betting on having enough moving water once I figure in the MBs, RBs, and STs. Along with Shade cloth, and free flowing air through the FH. To get me through the brutal summer heat. By the way what did you think about the IBC RFFs?

This is what I could find on average weather stats.

I wonder if insulating a box around the fish tanks top and bottom, with access through a lid. Then route the bathroom fan from the house straight into the box where the fish is for cooling in summer and heating in winter.. Not sure?
Also something to think about may be CO2 levels if the box is super airtight we may not get enough ventilation?
Another thing.. Placement of air pump and where the air pump is getting the air from May or may not affect the water temp?

Swede,

Thanks, the FH will be to far from the house to transfer hot or cold air. But reducing the amount of space that would need to be heated or cooled would save energy. Possibly in the middle of our short winter if a furnace was running it might be sealed enough to elevate CO2 levels. For the air pumps, I was planning on putting them inside. I figured that would make the charge air cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

Per temperatures,
With huge amounts of water, (provided you are not using any NFT or towers out in the heat) I doubt you are looking at water ever getting too hot for your fish if you stick with warm water fish. Since moving to the new farm I've only grown channel catfish, bluegill and gambusa (mosquito fish). I have not done any active heating or cooling and not had a real greenhouse of any sort. I'm further North but inland. It sounds to me like you will have more fish tank water and filter tank water and that you are planning at least some raft bed so I don't think you have to worry much about super rapid temp swings.

If you really want tilapia (personally I don't know why you would bother) during winter, decouple just their little part of the system when you think it is gonna be cold enough to bother heating and get some form of tank heater. You are only going to heat enough to keep them healthy, since you are de-coupled you don't want to heat enough to keep them eating very actively. You would insulate their little section but don't seal it up to tight since they do need some air exchange.

RAIN,
You probably want to do something to be able to divert and maybe collect a portion of your rain fall. I haven't had that kind of problem here, I'm on the Florida Ridge and those tropical downpours that much of the rest of Florida gets during the summertime weather pattern, doesn't hit us nearly so reliably. Often dumps on either side but once on top of the ridge we get a little rain but only rarely pond makers. Since moving to the farm I think I've only overflowed the systems with rain maybe a couple times.
But, if you have the height to sort it out, being able to run off the overflow to say a line of bananans or something could be handy. Luckily the major daily rains tend to happen in summer when the fish are eating heavily and the nutrient levels are high and often it is hard to find enough veggies to grow well during that kind of heat/humidity anyway so some dilution isn't a bad thing. (Dilution in winter is often more upsetting since the fish are not eating as much and cool weather is actually a really kick butt growing season here if you like all the cool weather greens.)

I will caution that totally manual climate control measures are unlikely to be very successful if you work off property at all unless some one who stays on the property is really into attending to it. This is especially the case with a greenhouse but an uninsulated enclosed shed could probably be a bit like an oven without some automatic ventilation. I've been kinda vocal on different sites about how ineffective or even detrimental a low tech hoop house sort of greenhouse can be here in our climate. There are some things that can be done but to a large extent our temperatures can vary so much so rapidly that you can cook even hot weather plants during a sunny day and still get too cold for them on a freeze night and the cool weather crops will just suffer too in such a greenhouse unless some one is there constantly managing the opening/closing heating/ventilation etc.

But, I have seen set ups that are basically a greenhouse roof with sides open. Convenient since they can also support shade cloth and collect rain water for you and if it is predicted to be a really cold night, sometimes all you need is a roof to stop frost damage or you might have roll down sides that you just use overnight when a freeze is predicted. The Open side greenhouse might also be fitted with fence or hardware cloth sides to keep the wildlife out. If you are able to carefully size the squares you might even exclude some of the moths/butterflies that can cause caterpillar infestations and maybe even block out some grasshoppers.

Now there are some tricks to doing a hoop house sort of thing where you leave the bottom edge on the cool side open and have a ridge vent open (position the ridge over a walkway instead of a bed) and you can get some nice air movement by venting the hot air out the top and sucking the cool air in at the bottom.

Biggest problem is most of this isn't cheap or if you do it on the cheap, you may find yourself spending more money in the long run on replacing things as they wear out.

TCLynx,

For the temperature side of things. Since I will be running dual loop for the first time. I do not know how much heat transfer there will be between the FH and MT/GBs. This factor may rule out my ability to run the dual loop setup. Or at least design so I could run either or depending on temps. As you said I may have to look into some type of automation to control temps. Seeing that I will still be working my full time job an hr away. Maybe I can run it off the same Arduino setup Chiumanfu designed here -> viewtopic.php?f=50&t=22607
As of right now I have no want to run either NFT or towers. I am going mainly raft thinking 16in (406.4mm) deep. So that I can use corrugated panels. Ripped in half the long way. To form a wall that insects will not be attracted to. I also plan on having a decent MB or Earthen bed section to grow root type crops, that don't do well in rafts. Like potatoes (I'm a sucker for potatoes), and carrots. I only have 2 acres (.8 hec) to play with. When done I intend to only have the walkways between the beds. So I have (guestimate), about double the water outside that I have in the FH.
How did I know the Tilapia comment was coming ha ha! Personally I like to eat them and after my first stocking I will never have to buy one again (hopefully). Being such a light flavored fish they also go with both my wife's Filipino, and my American sauces very well. Personally I do not eat catfish. I just put them on the list for being more cold tolerant than the Tilapia. Trying to find something to keep the nutes up during the colder months.
I do however like the netting sided hoop house Idea. I actually spotted a future neighbor with a heavy duty 4 wide commercial greenhouse with no film on it. Checking the Google satellite map it looks like it has been that way for some time. Maybe I can score it relatively cheap. Mount the wiggle wire sides like Ryan's, and net the bottom. Sounds like the best option.

Scored about 98000 virgin caps from work. Woo Hoo!

For some reason the picture did not post the first time. Here are the unused bottle caps.

That awesome, should make some good bio material for a mbbf. Better then my giant "bioballs". If you want to sell/trade(fish) for some I.M. me.

When you speak of liking tilapia because they are completely mild flavor fish, same goes for channel catfish grown in aquaponics. Only real difference between channel catfish and tilapia when it comes to eating is if you over cook them, the catfish gets really dense while the tilapia gets stringy.

True, it is probably not worth the trouble to breed channel catfish yourself since they don't even mature till between 3-5 years old but they are easy to get so there hasn't been much point in breeding them myself.

Do you have the whole breeding and hatchery operation planned for the tilapia? What are you planning to do with all the extra fingerlings you won't have space to grow out? They do make good chicken snacks, chickens love food that moves but can't escape. Are you prepared to do manual sexing of the tilapia?

Personally if you have a religious reason not to eat channel catfish and you are not going to heat to keep the tilapia eating, we like the bluegill better. At least with bluegill you know you have to deal with bones and clean a whole mess of them for a feed while with the tilapia filleting was a pain and many of the tilapia still really didn't get that much bigger than the bluegill anyway.

But enough of my harping.

TCLynx,

Yeah I already have most of the parts for the hatchery. And it is one of the main reason that I have so many IBC FTs. The breeding of any type of food fish (juvi/fry tanks). As for the extra fry, giving another poster a good start. Possibly craigslist. Since I was planning on having chickens anyway. The free chicken food is one idea I did not think about, thanks! Would the catfish and or bluegill eat the fry also? By the way no religious reasons for not eating catfish. Just tried them once and did not like them. Maybe it was the cooks fall. How hard is it to pellet train the bluegill?