Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Howdy everyone! Just wanted to see if there were any like minded people in my neck of the woods. I'm looking at running a greenhouse system with a 12x3 intex round pool as my fish tank. All other aspects have not been determined but want to pick some brains before I break ground and get going on it. My first system was in WA state and was an IBC system with three media beds.

Has anyone used one of those metal framed pools for a FT?

Has anyone had any success growing the fresh water Malasian prawn?

Anyone have any bright ideas on raising the overall water height of a 3 ft tall fish tank thats 12 ft wide? My two ideas thus far are digging out the rest of the greenhouse so that is all lower, or put the whole thing up on a deck of some sort.

Are there any commercial or semi commercial growers in the community?

Anyone sell at farmers markets?

Cheers everyone!

Welcome to the forum

height of a 3 ft tall fish tank that's 12 ft wide?
Hi Emmett,
is the tank round, square or rectangle and what is it made of?
Pete.

Pete,
The height of the pool is actually 30in and yes it is 12ft round. It is a flexible pool liner with a exterior metal frame. I was hoping to use this as my fish tank. My property is pretty flat and so i was concerned with the water height and not being able to get enough volume into the grow beds.

My best bet would be to raise the system up. Seems to be the easiest thing to do compared to lowering the greenhouse but a 12'x3' tank filled with water is going to need a VERY sturdy platform. I'm no builder so maybe someone else can chime in on a solid platforming surface?

Hi Freebird,


So what is the problem you're trying to solve? Is your plan is to overflow, SLO-style, the pool and gravity feed the grow beds then drain to sump and pump back to fish tank? Why not leave the pool on the ground and pump from the fish tank up to the grow beds which then drain back into the pool? Or if you're planning filters before the beds then pump from fish tank into filters which drain into beds which drain back into the pool? There are many success stories where the fish tank is lower than the grow beds. For example, Colum's System is that way.

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Sam

My first system was a CHIFT-PIST design and I wanted to try and keep that same design as it's what I know. I'm a lil worried about putting a pump in the fish tank because I want to try prawns and am worried I'd end up with a shrimp paste going into my grow beds. I'm not really familiar with a system like that. I'll look at the one you posted. Anyone else have a similar system?

I have a CHIFT-PIST system currently. I don't raise prawns but I feel if you caged off your pump or the prawns you wouldn't have any trouble except with maybe the larvae. Here's a video that kind of shows what I'm talking about: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lhPfKK6smLA

Sorry, for some reason I was thinking of a CHOP system, lol. My bad, my pump is in the fish tank though.

There are many like that. Another is Brian's Finally Building in northern New Mexico. I forgot who had the very large concrete fish tank he built below ground -- it might have originally started out to be a sump tank and ended up being a great temp stabilized fish tank. However with a 3 ft fish tank, perhaps you can still do SLO overflow into a lower sump tank and pump from sump tank into higher growbeds which drain back into fish tank firmly sitting on the ground. If you'll permit me to draw up a bit what I imagine might work, perhaps something like this... Pump in Sump Tank, pumps to Growbeds, Growbeds drain into Fish Tank, Fish Tank SLO overflows into Sump Tank. Repeat. I didn't draw the water distribution from pump in growbeds, nor the drains from growbeds into fish tank, but one can easily see how they might be run. If you're planning filters, you could pump from Sump to Filters which drain into Growbeds, and from there into Fish Tank, and back to the Sump. Repeat.



Does that make sense?

Putting a swimming pool on stilts or raising it any which way sounds like a lot of work and perhaps elevates risk...

What do you think? Would something like that work?

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Sam