Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

coming to the Vic meeting Steve?

If that's the one on the 20th, I'd love to, but can't.
Shiftwork has it's advantages, but one of them isn't getting to functions on weekends. I work 2 weekends out of 4, so I am a bit of a social leper at times(especially around nightshift!)

yeah DW does the same, excepting it's night shift every weekend barring every second Sunday... It's killing our social life, but the pay is good.

Yeah. They keep telling me the pay is good, but I never have any money!!!!! Pays most of the bills though. Sell stuff on Ebay to pay the rest. the only problem then is that I have spare spaces in the garage that I need to fill up with other crap that I buy off Ebay.........vicious circle.

SMF,
I was providing approx 50% of our power from solar panels and wind generator and had a changeover switch to go back to mains if the batteries were getting low. We have 1500Wp solar array and a 48V 550AH battery feeding a 4.2KW inverter.

Then I started BYAP.
I now produce the same amount of power but it is now 1/4 of our total power usage and instead of 4 days backup in the batteries, it is 2 days.

I am buying another 1KWp of solar panels and will check with my supplier for another 24 second hand Lead-Acid batteries to make up a second bank.

Our additional loads due to BYAP are:

• Aquarium heater 250W ( ~50% duty cycle)
• Aquarium air pump - 25W continuous
• Aquarium 1400 litre per hour pump (25% duty cycle)
• BYAP GB pump est 50W (25% duty cycle)
• Sump pump 1Kw (est 10% duty cycle)
• Garden pond 1400 litre per hour pump (25% duty cycle)
• Garden pond air pump - 15W continuous

It doesn't sound much but it fairly sucks the power from my Power System.

Tony

thanks for the info Tony

1 kW! Ouch! Is there any way you can heat your tanks with solar hot water or solar heat rather than solar electricity?

He could burn some shite I guess
attach his tank room to a composting tunnel (like what I've been working on) and use the 60º+ degrees produced by that to warm his fish?

The Aquarium heater is only for the brood tank indoors.

The point I am making here is that I am trying to fulfil a few goals with BYAP:

• to grow vegetables without using fertiliser and chemical inputs,
• To grow edible fish, and know what they have been fed and treated with (I am happy with the use of salt as a treatment),
• To reduce my environmental footprint in all of my activities,
• plus others...

While I am happy with my BYAP system progress and slope of my learning curve, I am not happy with the power consumption of my BYAP system.

I will be looking at my options for pumping and aeration, and the need for operating at 26°C in my brood tank. I have recently downloaded a paper on Tilapia which states that they will die below 10°C and will be stressed and susceptible to illness below 12°C, but the ideal temperatures for keeping them are between 26 and 34°C/
My brood tank can stay unheated until early spring when I need to breed up stock for the next year.

Pity someone hasn't come up with a method to reuse the waste heat from fridges. If you could offload it quickly enough you could get double benefits. More efficient fridge and 'free' heat.

I have plans on installing a water cooled diesel generator to supplement my solar/wind power system. I will use a SS heat exchanger to transfer heat to the fish tank. If consistently high temperatures can be achieved, I may use a floating net cage for breeding and another for fry grow-out.

Sleepe I thought about that when imagining commercial systems. (not that I'll ever get there) A cool room for keeping stock ready for shipping, along with other things like worms ready for feeding, other stock you may have kept, or even trout tanks.
Then next door, on the other side of the compressor, a heat room for the barra tanks and stuff...
It'd be a nice setup imho.

Take it this a barbecue smelling diesel Tony

KP
Hope that includes a cool 'sink' on the cool side. I have always found that ethanol and water in bottles (my preference amber or green) works really well.

Yeah I like ethanol and water in bottles too, preferably with some flavoring like scotch :-) Never much cared for the colour of the bottle.

But seriously, unless you were making a joke about cooling beer, I'm lost

On Youtube there is a guy that uses a solar pump.