Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I have spent the last week reading your forum and I love it. We have a 40 acre farm in Kansas (moved from Forida on 20 acres). I have chosen the perfect spot to build a green house / shed I am thinking 20 x 36.

Since it is cold here in the winter I plan on putting the fish tank in the shed side of the structure that will be heated (thinking outdoor woodburner as I can run several water to water and water to air exchangers).

I am thinking in the 500+ gallon size tank. I am wondering how many gallons I would need to support a family of 3 from the beds?

Also I just found these spill containment tanks:
http://www.plastic-mart.com/class.php?item=1444Part Number: NW250C
Capacity: 250 gallons
Size: 92"L x 68"W x 11"H
USD Price: 149.99

Tanks:
http://www.plastic-mart.com/class.php?cat=41
399.99 (click here for details) 920 gallons 106" dia. x 24"H ARM-10135

I already have some little giant pumps (thanks to the dumpster gods, guess someone graduated from UF and closed their grow operation. Got the CO2 regulator as well. Could not belive they tossed them in the dumpster. lol) but I will have to email them and get the stats on them.

We drove by the COOP yesterday and I spotted a bunch of tanks to go check out.

We were watching Law and Order a while ago and I started yelling at my wife - look, look that is a aquaponics system they are showing on Law and Order. It was a University studying pollution in a river. too cool as I was on here reading about it.

You all have me HOOKED!!!
I have a huge 40 x 50 machine shed, but it is facing the wrong way or I would be yanking off the tin and putting up Poly Carb on the sides. lol

My mind is racing. I have a idea for using solar heat also, my buddy in Florida had a solar hotwater heater he made him self for under $200.00. He also made a solar pool heater that worked great until the clorine ate the copper.

My idea is to build the solar collectors using copper tubing painted black with a series of loops inside the box then going to pex tubing to run to the heat exchanger so no copper would be in the fish tank. The bottom of the collector would have a V shape covered in mirrors to direct the light up to the tubes. (my friend in Florida just painted everything inside black and it worked so I might try this first) If the box was insulated and used a double poly window I belive it would hold the heat in there fairly well.

I better stop rambling, but please flood me with ideas.

Lee
Still wondering how I ended up in the wrong OZ ??
Bro-in-law is in the real OZ

Welcome Lee!

You might look at Doug Basberg's system (in Michigan), that sounds similar to what you have in mind with regards to heat exchangers. Also one to see is DavidC's beautiful greenhouse (corrugated galore):
http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/vie ... 4533#64533

Re: the 900 gallon tank, are you near Hospers IA?

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*SPECIAL NOTE: THIS TANK ONLY SHIPS FROM HOSPERS IOWA (51238) & ONLY SHIPS ON A FLATBED. UNLESS YOU ARE LOCAL OR NEED A LARGE QUANTITY, THE SHIPPING CHARGE WILL BE MUCH HIGHER THAN THE TANK COST. WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.
>

Welcome Lee, sounds like you've sure got the bug.... and like you've been doing your research....

Why not use your shed and have solar heating???.... have a look at this...

http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Sp ... arshed.htm

My large shed faces north to south, not east to west. Plus it surrounded by Trees on 2 sides (i.e. shelterbelt for house) I would have to use grow lights to grow the fruits of all the labor. lol

Lee

Thanks for the welcome and the info I will check them all out. As long as the wife does not get after me for being on here soooooooo long again. We both sell online so we are on these things all the time. Thank God for laptops and wifi. Can be inside outside or anywhere and be online. lol

I am in Kansas so not too far away for IA. Truck trailer can travel. lol

I def have the bug been staying awake thinking about it ever since I found this site. We have to find a way to make some money from our farm as well. 2 local farmers markets, one organic grocery store/ eatery.

We currently have 24 acres of organic alfalfa. I have been trying to find out what species of fish will eat alfalfa as we have TONS. Our son's rabbits love it.

Lee

Turn the shed around

Oh... and cut the trees down

ROFLMAO
It is a pole barn utilizing telephone poles that are like 40' at the peak. There are several cement pads from the old hog sheds that burnded down many years ago to the east of this shed (trees growing through cracks that I have been slowly cutting away even found some old Model A & T frames wohooooo rat rod time).

Yea Ruper I have been all over that site. It is where I got the idea of the greenhouse / shed. Brain freeze or fart could not remember what it was called.

would be sweet if you could find a way to heat it as much as possible without burning wood solar hot water heaters are better at heating water then solar panels are at creating electricity.

one of the things that really hooked me on aquaponics is it's permaculture/sustainable living aspects. doing things like attaching a greenhouse to your regular house ends up benifiting both buildings.

Thanks for pointing out Doug's system Dave. He is spot on with a bunch of my ideas. Don't know how I have managed to miss his system. After reading about failed pumps I also had the idea to use 2 pumps cycling on possibly timers to prevent a problem if one failed the other would kick in using some type of switch detection of the failure.

mrgrackletx that is my thought as well, but I like to back up my backup. lol

That is why we moved here to KS. We had a huge house and 20 acres in FL Taxes were $9,000 per year. We now have our farm (40acres) 7600sqft building on main street, 12 plex apartment complex, a 1890 Church, 7 rental houses, and our taxes on all are under $8,000.

We want to grow our own food as well.

Redundancy is good, if you have a choice between a big pump and two small pumps for reliability reasons you might want to use two small ones. There is a downside to using smaller ones in that they might not pull the solids out as well. I was using two small continuous pumps to service two beds each, but now it's down to just one servicing four beds. Designing the system as modules is a fun way to do it, just replicate more copies of the module to add capacity and/or take modules offline when the bioload shrinks like seasonally or after harvesting or whatnot. It seems more elegant to be able to do that than to have a large mostly empty system that you can't throttle down as needed...

We got another one

at this rate we are multiplying quicker than the aphids

Tilapia or grass carp would probably eat the alfalfa. Worth a try.