Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

So, I'm starting the new year with my AP resolutions. Number 1 is to hit the plant side hard this year.

I was thinking about how to add more grow beds and how to keep the cost negligible to do so. To start I could buy more mortar tubs at like $1 per gallon, and mount them on frames and blocks or milk crates. Beds can be made from plywood, foam, and liner. Then I thought about reducing the parts cost by making beds from mounded earth, pond liner, and gravel. May try some ferrocement containers for costs too. Went one step further and have been thinking lately about an open loop system with no gravel, just a dirt garden setup, and a separate running loop for biofiltration.

This would be a lot like where I'm at right now, just pumping solids and water out and replacing it on a regular basis. One of my goals for this year is to not pay for water or lighting. Now I'm thinking about adding a rainwater catchment to the house, and using the rainwater for top-ups. Our water bills have been excessive in the past year but I am not blaming AP for too much of that. The current system uses about 50 gallons per week because I am supposed to be removing nitrates in buckets every few days and replacing with fresh water. With PA's rainfall our house roof receives over 20,000 gallons of rain per year.

If run-to-waste is designed in you could have a very simple setup. I could tweak the setup I have now, how the water overflows to the sump now and gets pumped back to the tank through the biofilter, except the sump would have an overflow to a dirt garden. Top ups would cause overflow of solids and AP water to the dirt garden. If I had a lot of rainwater available the top ups and fertigation could be daily occurrences. I imagine ordering plants on a slope with heavy feeders getting the first shot at the solids, and maybe trying to distribute non-solids water to different places on the slope.

Our roof has asphalt shingles and this can be case for worry. From what I've read so far the problems are grit (not a problem to me), hydrocarbons, and zinc if the shingles are built with it impregnated on them.

I would like to reduce the industrial-ness of the AP setup. To me it would be nice to have something that looks more like a garden than sets of containers, if possible. The main thing for me would be to keep costs to a minimum so that I can build up as much growing area as possible. Our dirt is already out there so that would be labor costs-only.

I think it would be cool to have the house as a fertilizer-generating location, with a gradient of green lushness emanating from it. I plan to try something with a urineponics bent too, maybe just "leaking" out onto the barer areas of our lawn and see if they can be livened up with pee. I wonder what our lawn would look like for example if our AP water was leaked out onto the yard for a year. This could also be going on now in the Winter, so that the dirt was heavily fertilized and more than ready come Spring. A lot of our dirt is just bare clay, and I imagine that if we could get some more vigorous plant growth on it then it won't dry out and go bare in the hottest parts of the Summer, and maybe the plant matter could start becoming topsoil instead.

An old timer said during world war 2 that he did some hydroponics on a island for the troups. Bringing it back home he started hydroponic farming. He did not use green houses or containers. They dug two foot deep, level ponds lined them and filled then with crushed rock then setup drip irrigation and some flood and fill. That is how they did it.

Seems like ponds and rock filled ponds would look really good; add a water fall to return water to the fish... Hmmm.. Pond liners are cheap, but how would they hold up to rock?

I'm also thinking that a fair amount of pond liner and soil berm structure could be a very effective way to keep costs down, especially if you have some slope to work with. I'm a little more limited on slope so the pond/sump may be the only things done on/in ground with liner.

Hum, trying to wrap my mind around how to have one big liner do pond and grow beds yet still be able to do flood and drain or set up siphons.

You would have to be careful with sharp gravel in liner but that is just another reason to go for the smoother types instead of crushed rock.

I know that liquid gold fertilizer works (that would be urine diluted and used as fertilizer.) I ran some test last year throughout my gardens and it seemed to work just as well as the miracle grow I compared it to.

I don't know how effective running the nutrient rich water out in the winter will help come spring since much of the nitrogen will likely be lost to leaching during the spring thaw. Nitrogen is easily lost though your clay soil is probably much better at holding it than my sand is. When dumping nitrogen rich waters you want to pour them where there are greedy nitrogen sucking plants to use them quickly before they can leach or run off and pollute water supplies. This is the main issue/problem I have with run to waste systems (background in Hydroponics.) There needs to be rather careful attention paid to only watering/fertilizing as much as is needed so as not to waste and pollute. The recirculating systems might be trickier to keep balanced but they are less wasteful or polluting.

On pondliners I've found the best specifications and value for money is from a company called Bartlett.

www.bartlett.net.au
1800 63 99 66

The pond liner of choice for FTs that they recomend is the Trafab liner which is less than $9/m2. This is cheaper than the shoddy cheap .5mm PVC pondliner that you can get and it is much, much tougher.

For growbeds they have HDPE liners (the same stuff rural black poly pipe is made from) which would handle gravel being placed on top of them well.

Problem is HDPE liners are very stiff so any grow bed has to be built to mimise the number of angles and folds the liner has to do.

This brings me to a questoin that I had after talking with their sales people.
What problems if any have people who have used liners had with the liner growbed interaction in gravel filled GBs?

T Bartlett sales people where concerned about how even the HDPE liners would go in the long term (10, 20 years) in a gravel filled GB situation.

Stuart

PS I have been working on a few orders with these guys for a number of neighbours dams (red soil dosn't hold water) of around $40,000 a piece. So if anyone is interested in using their stuff I can consolidate orders. This may be really useful for most people here because a mimimum order for them is usually at least 100m2.

I think here in the US there are a couple different types of liner that would be pretty good. The Firestone liner is pretty good and very flexible. I have found it between $0.50 to $0.70 USD per SF plus shipping.

.70 USD per square foot.. Thats pretty stinking cheap for the amount of water you can hold. A 10'x10' by 2' deep pond would hold about 1496 gallons. Thats like .07 USD per gallon using a 12'x12'. Now, here where I am I would have to rent a tractor and that would cost $600

If you do all fish raising in once season...

I am just not sure this would be best for tilipia because they would die when it got cold. Here we would have only 8 to 10 months to grow out and harvest. A pond heater might work for a month or two.

For a 10' by 10' by 2' deep pond you would probably want a liner that was 17' by 17'. You need to take the width plus 2X the depth and then add 3' to be safe. And then the length plus 2X depth and add another 3' if you get the picture. Then the liners are usually sold in width increments of 5 or 6 feet. In any case it is pretty good value so long as the digging isn't too hard.

I had been thinking that I would probably be able to grow Tilapia year round so long as the pond had a bit of protection. They might not grow much during Jan or Feb but the water could probably be kept warm enough not to kill them. Then again, I'm still a newbie and could be wrong.
Where in Texas are you, big state you could be anywhere from a climate almost like mine or even warmer all the way to somewhere that might get a touch of snow on occasion.

Interesting site Dave http://www.tiwalkme.org/BellAndSiphon.htm

Possibly a pond at the bottom, terraces as GBs re Dan's idea.

Liner in pond, terrace/s made from earth from pond with ferro lining. Could be made to look prettier than normal set up with GB's curved round part of the pond.

Sorry starting to ramble, still a little fuzzy round the edges from New year.

What is the grow out time frame Dan? Rats, I was hopin for 9 months here in Mich, but thinking I am going to go for perch or cats instead

I was told 9 months minimum if all condition are right. Which, knowing me, they might not be perfect the whole time. This is my first year for tilipia.

I was eating the largest of my tilapia in about 9 months, but at the 11 month point, there are still some remaining in that batch that are too small to bother eating. Now knowing the volume of fish that my system can truly support, I think I could get most fish to reasonable eating size in 9 months. My system is indoors and heated to optimal temperatures. My main constraint has been the amount of feed that I can give and still keep the water quality up. My tank to bed ratio is only 1:1.

Well I think I have a plan for this year. No big changes from the previous plan, the sump will get some rampy-like parts to settle out solids near the old 1/6 HP pump that was used with my first system. I will re-use the basement sump pipe hole in the basement wall with a larger diameter pipe (maybe like 1 1/2") through it. The sump pump will pump through a 3/4" diameter pipe within the 1 1/2" diameter pipe (a pipe-in-pipe heat exchanger). This will hopefully recover some heat instead of just losing it to the outside.

I would like to make a tomato tree like at EPCOT, so I plan to reuse my 20 gallon round containers, mavbe four of them, to hold tomatoes, beans, peas, watermelons, pumpkins, cucumbers, or other viney plants. Around them will be a trellis made from galvanized fence pipe, and wire mesh or twine like at EPCOT. The vines will be trained up to and around the mesh. These plants will get the first shot at the solids that come out from the basement.

I may try to do NFT after the tomato pots and before the mortar tub using pipe or gutters, if they don't get too hot/dry. I figure strawberries or maybe peppers might go in there.

Next would be the 90 gallon mortar tub, with bushy plants like peppers, broccoli, etc. in back and lettuce and herbs in the front. Then the drain from the mortar tub will connect to the outer pipe to the basement. The water will drain to the "clear", non-solids section of the sump.

This would give me 170 gallons of additional bed gravel, in addition to whatever I am using in the basement. The basement biofilter(s) will be kept from receiving solids, hopefully all the solids will go outside with the plants. I am thinking about trying rotating biodisk biofilters instead of gravel in the basement, to use something maybe more efficient, not so bulky and heavy, and something that can't have anaerobic spots in it.

Until I can exchange water without losing too much heat, I will be running out to the beds then draining to waste, every few days like what I am supposed to be doing now. This would get the beds seeded nicely with bacteria and nutrients to maybe grow cold-weather stuff until the air gets warmer. Once things are warm enough I will be exchanging water instead of wasting it.

I would also like to set up some large tubs in a sunny spot and try growing duckweed and azolla for fish feed or compost using urine as input. And I want to gather water from the house roof and maybe test it or filter it somehow (solar distilling?) so it is safe to use for AP top-ups.

I made a few nice sketches last night at bedtime and I'll mock this up digitally some day maybe.

why would the water from your roof be no good for your AP as is is dave ?

Roofing shingles have all sorts of nasties in them.

AHHHH i see not many places have shingles here its either tiles or Steel so i wouldnt have thought that