Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations My (under construction) RAS & aquaponics system

I have been working on this for a couple months now.
Here are some updated photos showing the system with plumbing in place. The system is cycling right now. It is chewing through ammonia, but still waiting on the nitrites to drop. Did several water changes to at least get the nitrites on the radar. The tank with plants in it is a clarifying tank. It is filled with shade cloth. I got one heck of a deal on a large purchase of shade cloth, and needed it to cover the greenhouse, make shade shelters for livestock, and coincidentally, it should work well for filtration. The blue drum is a 70 gallon moving bed filter filled with kaldnes media. The water pump runs most of the water through the filter, and dumps primarily into the far tank, but I have outlets at each tank to dump some filtered water in. The water moves tank to tank by the U tube siphons. Some of the water is diverted before the moving bed filter, and flows into the grow beds. The grow beds have a bell siphon, which makes for an automatic fill and drain cycle. Plants will be grown in the grow beds, and should remove most of the nitrate, and minimize water changes. Two of these heat coils http://www.hilkoil.com/product.htm are being mounted in my wood burning furnace to heat the water. Hopefully, they will also heat the air quite a bit from the radiant heat off of the tanks. I am quite proud of it so far, and am dying to get it completed and stocked. There is also a blurry photo of some tilapia fry. Let me know what you guys think.

Pretty cool! Keep us posted!

Did you send the directions to build a fludized filter yet?

You've been busy! That looks very well thought out and detailed. I think it'll work fine. The Hyacinths seem to be doing well.

Nice!

Thanks for posting the link to the heat coils. I did not see any BTU's listed, but I should be able to get a close guestimate, or maybe easier, just give em a call.

I have them drawn up, but have not popped them in the mail yet. You will love the simplicity. I on the other hand hope that you can photo document your next RBC build to remove some of the mystery for the rest of us.

Thanks Esshup. But that is all an illusion. I have basically flown by the seat of my pants, and it slowly evolved into this. I am great at building things, but poor at planning. Believe me there are 20 trips to the hardware store for plumbing fittings to get where I am now!

JKB, They are actually building me two custom coils that are larger than their largest stock unit. My woodburning furnace has a 38 inch deep firebox, so we are making the units 33 inches long. They will both be mounted near the top of the fire box where the most heat is. I am not certain what to expect. If I cannot keep temps high enough for Tilapia in December January, and February, I will have to stock catfish for three months, and move them out to the pond to be finished out in cages. But lets keep our fingers crossed that I can produce a nice 70-80 degree tank temperature. I want to avoid any additional expense, and heating with electricity must be kept to a minimum. This winter will be a big experiment. I am going to stock two tanks with catfish, and two with tilapia. If Temps get too low, the Tilapia will become hog food, and replaced with channel catfish.

The odd floating contraptions in each tank are solids filters, in case anyone is wondering. I was running airstones in each tank, and thought I would capitalize on them by making air lift pumps. In each floating tray will sit a net pot with filter material attached to it. The airlift will bring solids up, and trap them. This should be easy to clean, and pretty effective. I hope that it cuts down on maintenance of the clarifying tank. Now if I could get them to travel around the tanks, kind of like those automatic pool sweepers, I would be golden.

The grow beds will be filled with net pots containing expanded shale media. This will act as additional filtration, and I will likely add some PVC pipe grow beds, kind of like these http://fishponics.blogspot.com/ Above the fish tanks.

Will probably build some additional filtration as needed to eventually reach my goal of 1500 pounds of fish. That is less than a pound per gallon, so I think it will be doable with excellent filtration.

Thanks for looking guys, and if anyone has ideas, or suggestions, they would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks Matt

Brier,

Did your Tilapia over winter ok?

Just wondering if you have any updates for us.

Thanks