Does anyone have an aquaponics system?

[carnivore]

Thank you, all! I'll put you on the list for a couple pounds of tomatoes!

Believe it or not, I put some sections of welded wire fence in there to help support the tomatoes, but the tomatoes just pushed them over.

Syl, this greenhouse is 26x12, and you can get one for $400 on Amazon. My sideyard on that side is 14 feet wide, so it is kind of shoehorned in there. Enough room for the dog to squeeze by, but that's about it. If you have a 30x15 space, you can do it!

 

[Syl in Tucson]

How do you keep it from blowing away in all this wind? I've had to rescue my shade cloths several times this week. A gazebo that I had staked down REALLY well ended up going OVER a 7 ft block wall and landed on 22nd st! Thankfully no car accidents, and nobody hurt, but still scary!

 

[carnivore]

How do you keep it from blowing away in all this wind? I've had to rescue my shade cloths several times this week. A gazebo that I had staked down REALLY well ended up going OVER a 7 ft block wall and landed on 22nd st! Thankfully no car accidents, and nobody hurt, but still scary!

The stakes that come with the greenhouse are a bad joke, I threw them away. I bought a bunch of 18" earth auger type stakes that are sold for awnings and portable garages. I put one in each corner and every 6 feet along the side. I used soft iron wire (the kind used for tying rebar together) to tie the greenhouse frame to the earth augers.
The canopy is pre-fitted to the frame. It is held to the frame with heavy 2 inch Velcro straps about every 2 feet along the length, and at the lower corners of the doors. There is also a foot wide skirt at the bottom of the canopy that lies flat on the ground. You can pile bricks, rocks, dirt, etc on the skirt to hold it down, but to tell the truth, I never bothered with that.
There are also roll-up screened windows along both sides for ventilation, but in my opinion, they are too low to the bottom to be very effective. It has roll-up doors at both ends, and unless I am expecting bad weather, I leave both open all the time.
The center height is 8 foot 8 inches, and a better design would put a vent at the top, or above each door.

 

[mommacassey]

I am planning a shelf-ponics style system as a test run with just a 10-gal fish tank and some goldfish--I was originally thinking mollies, but they breed WAY too fast!

I'm like others who have mentioned, I don't want to start out spending a lot of money on the initial set up and then figure out this isn't going to work for me. Plus, a small-scale set up will help me convince my husband how easy it could be...

I 've been doing some research to determine what growing medium would do the best for me, and while I think clay pebbles are going to be what I use in the end, for the small-scale test run, I was thinking of using a suggestion I found about floating foam to just let the roots rest directly in the water, rather than need to pump water up to them. My concern is that when I have had fish before, I've had live plants in the water, and they've always eaten as much as they could stomach--I'm worried that goldfish would eat the roots of all my plants before I could get anything harvested.

Has anyone here ever dealt with that kind of problem? It looks like majority of people use pumps and much larger systems, but I was hoping for some advice on this before I get going.

 

[carnivore]

Floating systems are OK for certain plant types (mostly used for salad greens) but taller plants need more root support. The clay pebbles are the "Cadillac" of media types, but way too expensive for a system of the size I have. I would keep your fish tank and grow bed separate, or the fish will likely enjoy your plants before you can!

 

[Syl in Tucson]

Use pea gravel in my set up. In my "test run", 10 gal aquariom I used aquarium gravel. And the guppies I had in there were VERY happy about the whole situation. Rafts don't work unless you can keep the roots safe from your fish. The darn things.

 

[mommacassey]

Thanks, y'all!

 

[Syl in Tucson]

Carnivore, how's the move coming along? I do not envy moving all your set ups !

 

[MeepBeep]

The stakes that come with the greenhouse are a bad joke, I threw them away. I bought a bunch of 18" earth auger type stakes that are sold for awnings and portable garages. I put one in each corner and every 6 feet along the side. I used soft iron wire (the kind used for tying rebar together) to tie the greenhouse frame to the earth augers.
The canopy is pre-fitted to the frame. It is held to the frame with heavy 2 inch Velcro straps about every 2 feet along the length, and at the lower corners of the doors. There is also a foot wide skirt at the bottom of the canopy that lies flat on the ground. You can pile bricks, rocks, dirt, etc on the skirt to hold it down, but to tell the truth, I never bothered with that.
There are also roll-up screened windows along both sides for ventilation, but in my opinion, they are too low to the bottom to be very effective. It has roll-up doors at both ends, and unless I am expecting bad weather, I leave both open all the time.
The center height is 8 foot 8 inches, and a better design would put a vent at the top, or above each door.

I agree the spikes they give you with these hoop buildings are a joke...

I just took down my huge hoop shed when I moved, it was in the middle of the yard and had little to no wind protection, the thing never budged an inch using this method...

I took 2x6 and made a wood frame that I screwed the legs to, so that every leg was basically connect to each other in a straight line... Every 4 feet on that frame I took a 4 foot long section of rebar and welded on a big fender washer, basically making a 4 foot long nail, I nailed the 2x6 to the ground with these spikes... Now these spikes were not necessarily for the wind, they more so kept the 2x6 frame from moving and shifting... To make sure it didn't go anywhere in the wind I used what they call 'duckbill earth anchors' (Google them up) these anchors are traditionally used to hold trees straight up and down, when they start to lean... They are easy to hammer in and nearly impossible to pull out... The shed will likely rip apart before they are pulled from the ground...

 

[Teery]

I like aquaponics however, where I live we sometimes get a break out of cucumber beetles. I spray my crops with neem oil and sal suds to combat them. Although both products are organic, I assume it would screw up the PH balance in the water something I don't want to have to worry about 24/7. I will likely go with a aquaculture system next year with a low profile bed to grow duckweed (which should help clean the water as well). Not to sure if the beetles eat duckweed...I guess I will find out...