Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

End of an era!





It will take a couple more trips before my equipment is all gone, but it's off to a good new home!

It's February, 2020, and it's been an interesting 10 months. But let's skip all that!

I kinda tore my right arm up a bit with last year's cleanup effort to shut things down in Frisco, but surgery reattached my bicept and I'm good to go!

I'm pretty much solely at my Dallas location now - I haven't sold the Frisco site (and don't plan to) but I'm not doing any farming there and just using it for mother-in-law maintenance.

So I'm thinking of starting to rebuild. I'm down to one small greenhouse, which is OK, but I've got the creek (seasonal) and a well (also kind of seasonal), and if anyone is interested I may be reaching out for some design help. Unlike previous efforts I *may* actually try to plan this next build out, rather than just slapping together whatever found equipment I could.

Don't get me wrong - I *love* slapping together found equipment (see earlier pages in this thread), but it also leads to me being sloppy, which leads to fish-killing disasters, so I'm tempted to be more careful this time around.

I am currently NOT planning on incorporating other types of livestock - neighborhood bobcats killed all the chickens I had in Frisco, and I already have a family of bobcats living under my Dallas barn.

If anyone has any suggestions, please throw them my way, and thanks!

I have a heat-exchanger question for the experienced crowd:

Is copper piping toxic to tilapia? If so then I might have to build some kind of glass jacketing, which would cut down on the efficiency of the heat transfer...

Tilapia are hard to kill:

"These data demonstrate the typical acute toxicity response of Cu, in which toxicity to tilapia increases as pH, total alkalinity and total hardness decrease. The results indicate that blue tilapia are relatively tolerant to Cu when compared to other species and that copper sulfate treatments in low-alkalinity waters may be detrimental to the health of blue tilapia."

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248340207_The_acute_toxicity_of_copper_to_blue_tilapia_in_dilutions_of_settled_pond_water

afaik stainless steel is the only thing safe to use if it's going to contact your water.

Thank you very much for the information!

-Shelgeyr

I may have to go stainless then, thanks!

I'm trying to figure out the best way to build a combination rocket stove / greenhouse seating bench / heat exchanger for the tilapia tank. And by "best way" (aside from construction materials like "use stainless steel") I mostly mean how I'm going to arrange it with minimum changes to my existing natural gas and water plumbing.

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Sounds like an interesting project. I look forward to the build. Please share photos, etc. as things progress!

Have you considered Hot water rated PEX?
It is polyethylene, which is generally regarded as safe, and will probably work out cheaper than stainless.
It's efficiency might be lower, but it might be something to look into...

Will

If you are making a rocket mass heater I'd probably just run stainless or pex tubing inside the bench along the chimney and a coil in the sump tank and a small pump to circulate the water. You may be able to fit a thermocube or something in there too to turn the pump on/off automatically so it only runs when there is heat available. Then you can leave your natural gas and plumbing set up for backup or if you need quick heat.

I got lazy (or pressed for time, take your pick) this winter, and instead of building the "combination rocket stove / greenhouse seating bench / heat exchanger" I went with "a couple of fans blowing heat from the natural gas stove towards and under the IBC tote". That turned out to be plenty, and possibly more than enough. Although I didn't lose any fish, at one point I think the water probably got too hot. I had the heater up too high, although not drastically so. Next year, in the interest of being more efficient, I'll probably build the heat exchanger I want, but at least I didn't lose any fish to the cold this year.

Now that my mother-in-law has passed away, I feel obligated to mention that her old nebulizers make GREAT air pumps, and since they haven't burned out after a few months of constant use I'm not sure they're going to.
Best of all, if I need any additional ones in the future, they don't seem to be very expensive online.