Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

hi all

newbie here and got a few questions. I'm a long time reader long time dreamer, and moved into planning process of my first set up. I'm in Perth western Australia , and my desirable fish of choice is trout. a lot of the stuff I've been reading is that trout is very seasonal and temperatures are critical. id like to know how to extend the growing season of trout without having to use a chiller. My last idea goes like this.

I was thinking of building a limestone 4 wall enclosure out of natural limestone 1000x350x350 blocks to act as a thermal protector, then line the exterior of the fiberglass tank with builders insulation . I'm looing at 2000litre tanks because of the slightly larger volume. Id be building this under a large peppermint tree which provides a lot of shade and build a lid over the top out of timer with access to the tank. also lined with a layer of insulation. shade clothes 1.8m above.

my question is , would this work to help keep the temps down for a extra couple of months or would the water still heat up. wifey says no tanks so I need to enclose the fish tank anyway with something that already suits my back yard. she will be pissed when there's grow beds everywhere but that's a technicality, there not tanks haha. am I wasting my time with all this. my main objective was to grow them for a little longer to hopefully result in larger fish. I'm not really interested in Barra. what other options are there to keep the water cool in Perth
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I did type this before but it disappeared so my apologies if there's 2 posts similar but yes I'm the same bloke.

Hi Steveyj87, welcome to the forum . No problem on the duplicate post, it's taken care of.

Cheers

Extra thermal mass will reduce the diurnal temperature range, but if days and nights are hot, the temp will still steadily increase. However, the GBs are where most of the heat gets into the system- you'll have to shade and insulate them too.

>> the GBs are where most of the heat gets into the system- you'll have to shade and insulate them too

+1

if you use rocks/gravel in Perth it will be even worse than if you use clay balls.