Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

rishel. with the FT it could go either way depending on direct sunlight. I have seen a lot of people try their best to keep the fish in shade. As dark as possible. While others have them outside in a pond. I never had one of those 500 gallon tanks to play with. But the thermodynamics of water make it hard to change the temp of that much water and that is good for you. From what I understand so far the main reason for black or shade is to stop algae. In a green house this should be a problem. You have lots of sun.

I do suggest that you do research on this and come to your own conclusions. It is a lot of money to spend and get the wrong items. Our weather is a lot like yours and for most of the year I have to worry about the water getting too hot. On my FT, I have to open the lids and place a fan over it to blow away the heat. In a commercial system I would need a heat displacement unit or refrigeration. With the food fish they toss in blocks of ice and all deliveries are done at night.

I would be interested to see a sketch of what you have in mind for your layout.

It is my personal belief that most of the fish AP setups on YT are bogus and never worked. How many have you seen where they go back months later and show you full size dinner fish. ZERO! I have seen this with commercial setups with thousands of gallons of water. I do believe that some of the members here are raising fish to eat and the best thing to do is find them and pick their brains for info. One of the members here told me that I would need over 200 fish at various levels to feed me one fish per week forever. Even at 500 gallons that might not be enough water. A little over 2 gallons per fish. I have a 70+ gallon home tank for the family and there is no way I could fit 35 dinner plate size fish in there and have them live. It gets crowded out with 10 large goldfish. Maybe 1 or 2 food fish if I removed all the gravel and decorations.

If you want to spend some money, the most important thing might just be a battery back up system that is on all the time. That many fish in a tank will die off in minutes with no air. Since this is outside and away from you, you might need an alarm system. I had one at one shop and it called me on my phone and with a preprogrammed message. I knew what the problem was before I even got there. And with my luck it only went off at 2 or 3 am. Most of the time I would find a fried rat that was now stuck on the electrical wire it was eating thru. We placed rice and wire outside for a test. They never ate the rice, went right after the wire. So rats can be a bigger problem then one thinks. I had to rewire all of my outside electric air and water pumps from plug and cord to wired in boxes and PVC pipe for the air lines to below water level. That stopped them.

Our rats here seem to have a symbiotic relationship with the village people. They are like little walking garbage trucks. They come down from the woods and mountain at night, eat anything they can find and leave by morning. They are not afraid of people at all. You can walk right up to them. I have never heard of anyone getting bit by them.

Deuem

It all depends on how you choose to clad them. The color is not as important as its transparency. The white lets too much light through. And can cause algae problems in the future. The blue and the black both block enough sunlight. To be efficient. However since we live in FL you may run into problems with the black barrels attracting too much heat. I have to ask what made you choose to use barrels for your grow beds. Instead of building square grow beds out of plywood and pondliner, which would seem appease your OCD, because of the smooth clean lines. Plus ALOT less plumbing to hide.

Morning:
Even inside with ambient light I have a problem with algae in the house FT. I added a UV light that is on a timer to filter pumped water outside the FT. That helps but in the summer it raises the temp of the water and I can only run it at night. The easy thing to do is to get a couple of good sized algae sucker cat fish. They will clean up a tank in a few days to a spotless condition. Plecostomus do wonders.



In 500 gallons they should grow to at least a foot long. In my old indoor pond, all stone, right in a front sunny window they grew to over 10 inches and kept the tank clean of algae. When I had the fish for food tanks, my biggest problem was scales from the fish clogging the filters and pumps. Pounds of them. With the addition of these cats, they ate all of the scales and grew at least 10 times faster then what I was used too.

I think that a layout here would help you get better help, the members can all run the math and help better. Right now everyone is guessing. At least a plan view with a cross section. Even if on a napkin.

If you want people to walk into this green house and say OMG, Fantastic Job then it will take a lot of design work to get it right, including placement of what ever you are growing. Visuals are very important. What ever the eye will see first, second and then third will be the determining factor for the OMG vote. I call it the WOW factor in design. If you have a fantastic design, people will just walk in and stop. It will take them a few moments to soak it in and then the "WOW" Stuff like 2 levels of viewing lighting works well for night. One to view and one to work. (plant/work lights) Waterfalls and water pouring statues are nice also. I had 1 waterfall that came on with the lights and an over ride switch for when we were working. In many places here they suspend fishing line from the ceiling to the floor and drip water down each line with special lights on it. There are many ingenious ways to get water moved that looks great. Ground level moats with bullet proof glass and Underwater LED lighting to be used to return water to a sump around the walking path. With fish in it. Maybe an all slate walking path with moss between the stones. The list goes on and on.........
D

Rishel:

I had some play time today and decided to take a better look at your set up for fun. Below is your green house 12 x 12 and everything I could add so far. It is going to be tight in there. Are you going to bury the FT? or leave it at floor level? The NFT is not to scale.



Another 6 barrels will be fun to add to this. And there are some barrels you bought that I have no idea on the sizes. This is not the setup I would do, I just put them in there to look at basic sizes. And you put the NFT near the door. It looks like the right side is a solid wall. The GH wall next to the building in your photo. Where the Blue Barrels are now.

Current Status and Design Concept.

Ok, there are a lot of changes there.

20 barrels, up 4
FT outside, buried and less 90 gal
No NFT ( the one you made was neat )

Now it depends on the style of water flow.

Say each GB can hold 20 gallons if full. I think it is 18, depends on media testing. Try one GB with a measured hand fill.
On E&F to all it would require you to pump out 400 gallons for each fill
If only the top was E&F and feeding the bottom on drain then 1/2 of that or 200 gallons
If you used a CF then there would be an extra 400 gallons out in the GBs

So E&F might drain your FT dry. It needs at least 10 times the water of the GBs IMHO so far.
It would cause your fish to go thru a 90% water change every few minutes. I think they would die off.
If you somehow staggered the fills so that only 2 GBs were full at any one point in time, that would be better for the Fish IMO. Just a 10% water change all the time.

A constant Fill would have a constant FT water change.
In design, I like the ability to regulate the CF design level to any level from full for seeds to 2 inches in the bottom. I have been playing with a CF, with adjustable heights and on timers with larger over fills and slower lower drains. So get it nice and wet to a desired level and slow drain to another. Each planting box can be different that way. Looks like CF tanks will need air stones.

One member here showed me his slip fittings with a rotating U drain. Just turn the drain and lower or raise the levels. That worked. Since I am inside I am worried about kids pulling on the slip fittings and creating a nice problem to blame on the dog we don't have. In China there seems to be a ghost for every problem because no one ever did it. lol Even at work no one did it. It was the ghost. If you are the boss, father, husband, no matter what happens it is your problem now. And it usually is by that time.

So how you gonna fill?

Each of those half barrels when full should weigh a bare bone minimum of 200 pounds, less plants. So that second level can weigh a ton and up depending on media. The entire rack 2 tons. When you mentioned bar stock, What is its shape?

I was running numbers for my self and If my calculations are right a 410 gallon Ft should be able to hold 88 dinner size Tilapia Fish. More with higher tech. A 1.25 pound fish needs 4.675 gallons. I now use 5 gallons as an average.

I think my main question is... aside from the water issue (which I can remedy), should I go ahead and do the 20 grow-beds now or scale back to 10 only. Obviously with 10 I would only need to have Vick weld a single layer shelving system.

We have everything to do a two layer shelf system now, but just though I would ask.

If you did the first level now and the second later would you need to weld it in place or outside and move it in? That question might answer your question.

If later is as simple as ABC then get up and running with 10. If it is a nightmare them weld it in now and just leave them open for now if you have doubts.

This is from the internet but simple wood beds can give you more levels if you wish. They can be dressed up or have NFTs hanging off the front of them.



In the photo they could have done a cleaner job on the liner. I guess they were in a hurry to plant. Most installations are clean and capped. It scales about 6 feet long. They have fish on the bottom but one could put root plants there. It has nice areas to hang lights. My Test 3 concept so far resembles this idea.