Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi,

I am curious about something, but first a little background. I am not doing aquaponics, but I am intrigued with the idea.

I live in an area with hot summers and cold winters. Relative humidity is low here, low enough that a lot of people use swamp coolers to cool the house in the summer.

My question revolves around the feasibility of raising trout, in particular water temperature during the summer. Here's a hypothetical setup: fish tank in a shed, planter bed just outside of the shed so the plants get sunlight . In the summer (which gets over 100 degrees F for several days in a typical year) would the air bubbler in the tank provide sufficient evaporative cooling of the water in the tank to keep the temperature low enough for trout, or would one need to provide additional cooling to the tank? Also, I am assuming that I would need to provide for air exchange with outside air so the humidity wouldn't build up too high in the shed. Otherwise it would end up shutting down evaporation and defeat the cooling effect of evaporation. Also, keep in mind that the tank would not be in the sun.

I don't need a definitive answer. Even some informed speculation could be useful.

I have another question or two, but to keep the discussion better organized I am just raising one question here.

Thanks.

Hi mate. The grow beds are the main heat sinks, being in the sun, hot to cold thing. Water having a good thermal mass takes time to heat up but also cool down and the more water the more constant the temperature.
I work in the HVAC industry and have been on the look out for an old small cooling tower for free For a few years now and have thought of an evap cooler as an alternative so I could keep trout through summer here. I have used evap cooling to keep trout through summer in the past but it’s been an amateur attempt utilising materials on hand and incredibly stressful during heat waves (multiple 40°c or 104°f days in a row)
Of course water consumption would sky rocket and with water restrictions it may not be viable. Some use water chillers to great effect however then power consumption sky rockets.
I like to be able to fillet and pin bone trout so larger fish help with this and so am still planning to use a cooling tower as I know I could keep temperatures below 22°c.
And then there’s my barramundi heating challenge.

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Skeg In The Hills.

I expect night time temps are significant. If night time temps drop below 20 degrees C then by increasing flood and drain cycles at night and minimising the cycles in the day would help. And obviously shade and insulation. I would think that if night temps are above 20 and day temps above 30 for a few days it would be impossible to keep trout without proper chilling equipment.

Thanks for the answers so far.

Regarding chilling towers, I should look into that. We live in a dry climate. However, we generally don't have water restrictions here, and I have irrigation water at my home for a flat rate, so if I were to use extra water from that source it would not matter. The down side of using that water source could be the possibility of disease entering the system because that water is not treated.

Changing the cycle time day/night sounds like an interesting idea. July is the hottest month here. Average night time low temperatures are about 19 C and average daytime temperatures are about 34 C in July. Sometimes temperatures are higher in July, especially daytime temperatures.

Welcome to the forum first off! It's a great group of people here, and i'm from Utah myself (the Provo area). Just currently out of state for the foreseeable future due to work.

Reading your post, it is very doable to maintain an effective system in Utah's climate. If you look at my thread, from forever ago you can see my mistakes and successes of having a system in that climate (it's been a hot minute since i've posted, you may need to dig a bit). I agree with what's been mentioned already regarding the cooling method, i think theres systems out there that can both heat and cool the water, but i'm not sure how much something like that would run, let alone the electrical cost of keeping it going.

Just my 2 cents.


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Life is short. Don't let anyone suck the jelly out of your donut. Especially your super fun motorcycling donut. That's precious jelly son.

My build http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=25201

Hi, I am also originally from Provo. I grew up very close to Utah Valley Hospital, but both of the houses I grew up (one just north of the hospital, and one just south of it) are now gone, victims of expansion of the hospital and related businesses. In fact, almost the whole neighborhood is gone now.

Yeah, it's super depressing at how over populated that area has become. I mean good for the hospital and all, with better healthcare, and continued research and development, but it's sad to me to see that area slowly give way to high rise buildings. When we retire, i have no intentions of living there again. I plan on either the Mount Pleasant area, or northern Idaho away from large populations, on a self sustaining plot of land.


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Life is short. Don't let anyone suck the jelly out of your donut. Especially your super fun motorcycling donut. That's precious jelly son.

My build http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=25201

My brother has a cabin near Mount Pleasant.