The Indoor Aquaponics Grocery Store
So this weekend I set up my planned indoor aquaponics system. The truth is all I really needed to do was set up a 100 gallon tank and one small ebb and flow bed this year to grow tilapia fry until spring and get a jump start on growing them. However always wanting to give you more, I have turned this into an educational project.
I am using a 300 gallon rubber maid stock tank, along with rafting, a 50 gallon ebb and flow and a small wicking bed inside one of my out buildings. Setting up a lighting array and heating the water with 300 watt aquarium heaters. Each spring we will drain this tank and move all starts to our main systems. We can also starting next year over winter aquatic vegetation such as salvania or duckweed with it.
This really isn’t to show you how to do this indoors just how to set up a system and get it producing fast. Using the components in this system you literally have a roll your own kit by visiting Lowes and Tractor supply. As this project evolves I expect many aquaponics hold outs will realize how easy this is, how well it works, and will finally take the plunge. You can track the entire playlist at http://bit.ly/indooraqua and below are the first two videos.
I plan to go to the “winter time plant store” later today and film episode three soon. So what is the winter time plant store, oh you call that the grocery store and no, I am not kidding.
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Hey Jack, I saw a comment on youtube you hadn’t replied to and it made sense to me. Is there any reason you can’t heat the water in the whole timber frame pond setup to keep Tilapia alive and pipes from freezing so you wouldn’t have to drain the setup? Seems to me once you have it at temperature it wouldn’t take as much to keep it at temperature. Could be really efficient with a solar hot water heater setup? I live in southern AZ so I think we are similar in temps and I used water heaters a ton in construction, installing floor tile with a wet saw, heated the saw water, thinset water, grout water, etc because they work best around 50-70 degrees on top of being much more comfortable than 30 degree water cutting you off the saw lol.
What do you think? Just too much energy reliance to keep it heated? I would hate to have to drain that system every winter, even just keeping it running at 35 to keep from draining would seem to make sense. Plus with heated water you might be able to trick the plants into growing still? maybe a hoop house over them to keep wind away? Just rambling my thoughts, feel free to shoot my hopes down lol.
I don’t find it to be practical when we have say a week of below freezing temps coming and no tilapia are now in nor will ever been in the timber frame ponds. To hard to get them out for one thing.
I’ve been raising aquaponic tilapia in my shop for several years. It’s a basic IBC set-up with an old bathtub as an additional grow bed – about 200 gallons of water total.
The furnace keeps the shop at 45° and I run two 500 watt aquarium heaters to keep the fish water at 70-75°. In my experience, tilapia go belly up if they get down to about 50° and for optimal growth they’d like it to be 80°+. The warmer water does help with plant growth.
For pumps, I’m running a pair of 264 GPH Harbor Freight specials. They work well and are plenty cheap at about $18. Eventually the impeller shaft will wear out but I just cut new ones out of a stick of stainless TIG welding rod. The pumps have never failed otherwise. I’ve run flood and drain with both bell siphons and timers, but long ago settled on running continuous flow.
I have 400 watt grow lights (MH/HPS) over each grow bed but will be switching to the Kingbo LEDs soon.
It sure is nice to have fresh lettuce, peppers, tomatoes, celery, sweet potato leaves, greens, scallions, herbs, etc in the middle of our midwest winters!