Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

After a long and frustrating struggle I have at last tied my sponsors down to giving me a go ahead to build an aquaponic set up. I will tell you what the building will be like and you can ponder over Christmas and make suggestions which I will give much attention to. Here goes.

The building will be 15 meteres square and for the purposes of getting planning permission (which we have got) is an agricultural/horticultural unit. The roof and sides will be in alternate metal and transluscent sheeting and the height at the apex will be 12 feet. The walls will be 9 inch hollow blocks and 4 feet high.

The floor will be 4 inch thick concrete and will have channels therein for drainage and running cables and pipes.

The shed will have plenty of daylight and supplementary lighting in the first instance in flourescent strips.

Hoping to have a separate agricultural electrical supply.

The real problem is setting out the fish tanks and the grow beds.

Also deciding on what sort of cold water fish would be best to grow for eating and for sale. Remembering that we live in a temperate climate and water temperatures can get down to 40F. Any sugestions on this as well...

Prime consideration is to maximise the grow bed area as the whole set up must accentuate the commercial potential of this type of operation.

So just imagine walking into this empty space and saying "This is what I would do".

Let the Game begin!.......

WD

While we are here - we would like to wish you all the Seasons Greetings or Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda ! as we say here in Wales.
May all your dreams come true..

A few quick thoughts and maybe I'll scribble later. I think trout might be nice or maybe catfish. Determine what the most favored fish are in your local market. Go to the fishmonger and ask what fish s/he moves the most of. I would specialize in only one or two types of fish. Other thought is to ask at the local hatchery to see what the most popular fingerlings are, and what's the hardest to kill. No sense in raising up lots of "Fish-A", only to discover that locally, "Fish-B" is really popular.

I would run several parallel system, with separate tanks and beds. That allows you to have several batches of fish at different stages of growth. Also allows containment of disease if something goes wrong. Take a look at the Spereano (I'm sure I didn't spell that right) set-up for a large-scale commercial example.

Growbeds that you can reach both sides of can be 4 feet wide, and beds along the walls can be 2 feet wide. This allows you to reach to the center of the beds.

Hi Welsh, good to see u around. Lotta hard work done on the whole permit design stuff, well done.
I am no expert on anything in particular, but if u can use some available concrete cable infrastructure to run temp raising water thru copper pipes for eg, u may be able to grow out of season fish and veg. (Higher margin.)
With regard to gb location, more sun the better for your area, I guess. Fish don't want/need the sun and exposed fishtanks have O2 stripping isssues.
I am sure there will be heaps of free advice here. Merry Christmas! TT

Janet - thanks for your input. We are currently thinking of putting 2 feet wide and 4 feet deep tanks along the south facing wall with the grow beds overlapping the tanks. Sadly we cannot find anyone to fabricate the growbeds for us so I may have to make them out of 1 inch plywood with a liner and use clay balls as the medium.

There really is a shortage of good practical info here so a lot of our progress will have to be what we learn from BYAP,Joel's book, DVD and common sense.

As for marketable fish there are two options trout and carp with the former being the preferred option for the sponsors who have a say in this. We can also get fingerlings and larger fish from a fishery within 100 miles.

We are still planning so all advice is welcome.

WD

Remember to keep good access to the fish tanks so you can catch the fish easily. Nothing worse than have to crawl under the growbeds to catch the fish or maintain the pump.

what sort of trout?

From my experience they are fast growing and quite hardy as long as you keep the oxygen very high (which shouldn't be hard)

Hey, mind your language there, welshdragon, there's little kids reading this stuff, you know !! LOL - only kidding ---

Doesn't sound like they are putting many budgetary constraints on you. I hope it goes well for you.

OK, some diagrams for you.

If I were building my ultimate system, I would use looped autosiphons, continuous pumping, and sumps. (Or maybe perforated standpipes, sumps and timed pumping. Not sure.) I would run multiple parallel systems so I could raise different species and/or sizes of fish. On the north and south walls, I'd put half-size systems so the growbeds could be narrower. Most systems would be a 1500-2000 liter tank, 4000 liters (13.3m x 1m x 0.3m) of growbed, and 700 liter sump. Each system could technically hold 100kg max of fish. (Since my system doesn't currently use a sump, I'm guessing at the sump size. Someone check me.) Pics are below. I placed the sump under the end of the growbed to save floorspace. The piping up from the sump goes on the outside of the growbed, not through the bottom of it. Hard to tell in my drawing.

The one disadvantage to this setup, is that there is no swirling in the main tank to get poo off the bottom and give the fish a current to play in. Might also need a screen/mesh shield on the overflow to keep floating food from going to the sump, and to keep small fish out.

Janet, I like your idea. Tell me. Is there any reason to keep the parallel systems isolated? If you are raising fish that like different hardnesses, or tolerate different levels, I understand. But if not, why (keeping your system as it is) add a pump or series of pumps, to mix the water between your tanks. a small pump from the sump of one line to the tank of the next will work nicely. This will give MUCH greater water stability, yet perhaps remove some flexibility I am not yet aware of.

I am doing the same thing only with one large fish tank with screens between species. More stability IMHO

I thought in terms of easier plumbing, redundancy, no single point of failure, ability to test multiple configurations/temperatures and isolation in case of disease. It's a starting point to consider, and everyone is welcome to offer modifications, of course.

I agree on all counts Janet, it is fabulous for all those points. I will have to think up some fancy plumbing layout for the water distributor, so that a run can be isolated... bte you forgot modular! so you can grow it any time you like :-) hmmm disease and quarantine rule out using one big sump... I will think on it.