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.
