Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Progress has been slow (still building house) but my uber BSF culture would have been ready for unveiling today if I hadn't forgotten to get the final two bits from the tip yesterday

Anyway I've been trying to get my head aronud various GH features specifically insulation.

Option 1 is don't bother. Single skin tunnel GH. Yes my area is cold by Australian standards (we get snow, and it settles) but compared to many of the N American systems its very mild.

Option 2 is twin skin tunnel GH with rigid foam insulation of X thickness sunk into the ground Y metres to partially insulate the earth pad that the GH sits on.

Option 3 is twin skin tunnel GH with rigid foam insulation of X thickness sunk into the ground Y metres with same along the bottom to complet insulation layer on all sides.

Option 4 is a compromise between 2 and 3. Basically same as option 2 but when constructing FTs and GBs insulate them from the surrounding earth.

If I go with my orignal intention of trout then option 1 is going to be fine. However, from what i've read about Red Claw (tolerance of crowding and fast growth rate) I'd love to give them a go and would conseqently need to keep the water temp a good bit above 10C.

Any thoughts and advice?

Bearing in mind that my climate is colder than Jim's at Bunninyong and FnF's at Sunbury. For anyone who knows Canberra region my climate is slightly warmer but Canberra gets a lot more sun.

All the spud farmers in stuarts area wear jumpers all the year [ went to an auction there once it was snowwing

Design is coming along but I've got a question for peoples.

The picture shows a shallow tank that will have a flout connected to the drain. Periodically it will drain 30cms to a depth of 18cms and stop because the flout will be prevented from sinking to the bottom of the tank controlling the drain depth. The exiting water will travel along the 2" pipe shown.

Q. how quickly would this drain occur (roughly)?

Q. is the small fall going to cause me problems?

Hope someone can help.

Looks like your going to have to build it and find out SC..... We need some more floutists. After all there has only been one rudimentry flout built by one member of the group that I've seen, so I don't think anyone can really answer your question... Besides that, how big is the tank?

I don't think the fall would be such a big issue, as it is with syphons, would it..?

From my understanding of the flout, as long as the float is able to float after the drain has completed, then it will continue cycling.

Need to know how much water in the tank to be able to determine time taken

Answered the questions in reverse order.....just like entering pics

Tank is proposed to be 1m wide and 6m long made from pond liner.

Hi Stuart,
Can`t help with the tank question i`m afraid but Option 3 for your greenhouse sounds good.
Perimeter insulation ~2ft deep x 2" thick installed vertically or if the digging is really tough you can install it horizontally for the same effect.

Fortunately the digging is really easy.

SC, if you are going to drain to a depth of 300mm then the water to be drained out is 1,800 litres...this will take ~12 minutes.

As the pipe length increases (and the more horizontal it is), the time taken will increase.

If the tank is filled with gravel then the amount of water (and the time taken) will decrease accordingly.

After many distractions I'm finally getting moving on my system.

I have gone through so many ideas trying to work out the smartest ways of doing everything. However several weeks ago I came to several decisions.

Rather than have this system in a green house I am going to have it outside and it will be my premanent cool water system.

Since it is not going to be in a GH all sorts of design pressures I was putting myself under no longer apply.

THe main aim now is to get the system set up and running for planting by the end of Jan so that the some/all of the Silver Perch that Kuda and I have talked about getting can go into the system and it can get established before the weather turns cool.

To this end I've now got a bunch of decisions to make quickly. One being how deep should my FTs be.

I've got a Corrugated iron tank that I'm going to cut up and then place a liner in each smaller (shallower) tank. ThHe question is how many times do I cut it up. In total it is about 2.8m deep. Due to liner width restrictions the possible depths are two tanks of 1.2m deep, three tanks of 90cm deep or four tanks of 70cm deep.

What are people thoughts?

wouldn't go less than 1.2m out of those options. At 70 or 90cm they will stress easily. You will also get greater water temp fluctuations over a shorter period of time with shallower tanks.

Hi Stuart
Looking good
check out www.wetearth.com.au for your plumbing fittings
Based in Albury, freight is less than $20 and you can get a heap of different fittings about half retail

cheers
Rodney

Why not do 2 FT at 1.4 M each?

The reason for the sizes that I gave was because of the fabric width of the liner. If I do 2 FT at 1.4m each then I'll be wasting a substantial amount of liner. This would significantly increase the cost and one of my main considerations has been what is the lowest $/L that I can get from the options I've been considering.

2 FT @ 1.2m deep works out to be $.025/L
2 FT @ 1.4m deep works out to be $.036/L

Thanks Notable their prices are really good. Only thing is putting the order together so I get everything in the one hit.

After getting to the point where I thought I could get started I can't. In fact my Mum's farm is no longer an option at all.

I inspected one of my possible alternative sites today and to say the least it poses a number of challenges. Not least of all is where do I get water from? There are four dams in the vicinity but the good one is the one that dosn't hold water while the other three have electrical conductivity readings of between 7.5 and 10.5.

So my questions are:

What plants will cope/thrive with salt other than Capers?

What cweatures will thrive in water that salty?

How much water do peoples systems need to maintain them (excluding water changes, spillages and leaks)?