Pond Boss Forums INTRO New Forum Member Introduction Howdy, from northern New Mexico

Howdy my name is Brian, I live in northern New Mexico. I've built an earth-sheltered greenhouse fish house with 2600 gallon fish pond, filtered by an RFF and MBBF and four media grow beds. At this moment we have 45 Brook trout ranging in size from 4 inches to seven inches, four large Comets living in the pond

Welcome to the forum!

I'm sure you will be getting a lot of questions about your set-up!

Very cool!

More pictures would be great.

Welcome to PBF.

Welcome to the forum Brian. It's great to have another westerner posting. Having brookies prolly means you're not in nw N.M. by Farmington, right?
I'm across the border near Dolores, Colorado.
How do you get your water (cold) for the trout?
If you like, tell us more about your setup, i.e. how long it's been in operation, what you are growing, goals, etc.
Have you seen the sizes of the brook trout Cecil Baird raises? Obscene, ha ha!

Welcome! Cool pictures

BBoss,

What brand of media are you using in yout MBBR (MBBF)? How many cubic feet?

What do your temps max out at?

So your RFF keeps the water clean enough for your brook trout?

All DIY?

Hello brian,

I see you posting on BYAP a fair amount. Welcome to the forum.

There's still a large aquaponics undercurrent that says everyone should use tilapia in aquaponics. This is where i come for information and learned how to raise native fish. Lots of great contributors and lifelong fishkeepers here.

brian

Why thank you everyone. Yeah, Brian, I'm a fanatic on backyardaquaponics. Great group there, it looks like a great group here as well.

Northeastern side of New Mexico. We live on a small forest ranch in the mountains 7500 feet above sea level north of the original Las Vegas (the wildest west) Crazy weather swings here probably due to climate change(a three year drought followed by the worst flooding in a hundred years) caused me to build something to provide a stabilized growing environment.

The pond is "dug" and I use that term loosely five feet into the limestone behind our house. This project started out as a way to get in shape as I turned 60 when I started. I've always been physical, feeling strongly about burning calories not fuel, well to be honest I drive my souped up Jeep all over these mountains for my job as a WiFi installer. I'm also a biodieseler and all our vehicles run on fuel made from waste veggie oil here at home.

The temperature is stabilized in the greenhouse-fish-house employing an effect called earth-sheltering. This basically means the greenhouse is mostly underground and the pond is even deeper underground. Heat losses are controlled by minimal use of glass and clear acrylic channel panels on the roof. More surface area in the greenhouse is underground. Also my media grow-beds used to boost filtration are deep and narrow. It seems to be working as we did not see water temperatures rise above 64.5 F. I've also added reed cloth over the roof panels to reduce the intensity of the sun, and a thermostatically controlled exhaust fan.


My system is fully documented here: Brian's Finally Building in northern New Mexico http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=23206

My moving bed biofilter is a 200 liter HDPE rain barrel with 2 cubic feet of Kaldnes K2 at the moment it is a single style MBBR, but at some point I'll modify it to a combo static and dynamic MBBR. FYI MBBF and MBBR are two names for the same filter.

I don't know about "should" use Tilapia. It depends on your main goals. Tilapia produce the most meat from the least feed, bar none. But if you just want fertilizer for mainly plant growth, other fish do a far better job at poorly converting nutrients.

Interesting. I thought it was probably CC. I read somewhere (or maybe saw a video) not long ago in a Bob L. article that CC convert feed to weight at a 2 lbs feed to 1 lb growth rate which I thought was impressive. I need to figure out how to get Tilapia!

"... other fish do a far better job at poorly converting nutrients." uncertain I get what you mean here, Rainman

It Refers to nutrient (food) conversion. A tilapia gains 1 pound of flesh from eating 1.2 pounds of quality food. A Large Mouth Bass gains 1# from about 4# of quality feed (10# of natural food) Catfish and most sunfish need about 2-3# of high quality feed to gain a pound.

Tilapia generally cost about 1/3 per pound than other fish to grow.

When I said "... other fish do a far better job at poorly converting nutrients.", It was me politely saying they crap out a lot of undigested nutrient, for plants to uptake after bacteria breaks the waste poo down.

Thanks, I was kind of thinking that is what you were saying. Thanks for the clarification. Where do trout fit into this ratio?

We were just up there for a destination wedding at Durango, came back through Monte Vista where we bought our fisrt batch of fingerling Brookies.