The School of Aquaponics
The School of Aquaponics
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Has the aquaponics god never seen a geothermal ground loop before? Underground temps here run 70-72 degrees year round here in east Texas, it does take some work to run your heat exchanger but it is absolutely free from an energy standpoint. You need ventilation anyway so why not run it though an earth tunnel? Your system is circulating water 24/7 route it as deep underground as you reasonably can. A larger mass of water takes longer to change temperature (so long as you don't increase surface area along with it) you can use that thermal mass to even out the occasional cold snap. Of course everything in engineering is a compromise.
If you put air lifts on your solids lifting over flow, it would move those solids. Like a shop vac only powered by the air pumps you already have.
Please guide us through the water usage we are looking through the year.
Hi Brooklyn. I live in a water scare area every litre is important for us. It would be really helpful if you guide about the water usage I'm looking at for a 80 to 100 thousand gallon water tank with 4 8*4sq.ft grovel beds and 12 6*3sq.ft dwc beds.
I have to disagree with you on this one. The reason is this is not a flat bottomed pond. It has a sloped bottom so would only require a sump pump at lowest level. Secondly Koi ponds tend to be highly stocked with large filtration devices as people want to watch the fish not an empty pond. Now I agree this pond is so large I would not recommend starting with a system that large. My back ground is tropical fish breeding and market garden(farmers market farm) with an associates degree in horticulture. I did run small aquaponics system off of my tropical fish breeding shed with 300 hundred tanks on central system that fed a small gravel bed to grow fresh veggies for the family in winter. I am watching YouTube aquaponics as I am building a greenhouse right now to house a true aquaponic system. I would love to have that pool to use as tank construction is so expensive. Now flat bottomed above ground pools are worthless as they are to large around to get a swirl or vortex to move solids to the middle without stressing fish with fast moving water(well maybe trout but doubtful). Your advice has been so informative and I am working on a blend of ideas. My fish BTW are going to be Koi and colored crayfish bred for aquariums. This small greenhouse at the house will be played with to get the system right then I plan to build ten thousand gallon tank as koi need the space as they get to 3 feet long. A good choice for that large pond but not cheap to start out.
I got you beat on the free temperature control, I live in the tropics and our temperature is the same year round.
Would love to see a tour of your personal system
Excellent brother
my 500 GPH pump dropped by 3/4 to MAYBE 75 GPH with a 5' lift but another 6' foot run for a total of @ 11'… I had to get a much larger pump and work to lower the length of run.
hello , i am new to this and starting from scratch( buy land and set up a green house in cuz we get snow in winter).so here is the question, is it easy to convert Hydroponic to Aquaponic ? my goal is to do Aquaponic but because i have no experience i thought maybe Hydroponic is better to start.
It’s really nice video,
You have experience and if I would start my farm. I will definitely take your advice,
A year or so from now .
https://youtu.be/KRNEMUZgI08 Answer Video or next step in planning
To heat the water, sun is an unexpensive resource. I've seen many peoplesrounding two or three rounds of black irrigation piping in the fish tank, than connect it to a DIY thermal solar panel with a pump controlled by a thermostat.
First off let me Say THANK YOU! You are awesome at what you do. I have learned a lot from your videos. I have almost completed the design of my system just from watching Your videos. I needed some math that you provided to learn what I was doing. Trying not to be a Bonehead as I call my kids. My videos are short do to my phone storage limitations. I try to keep them at 30 seconds. longer videos need to go through my PC. I am digging out my lanes for ground temp stability. I am thinking about using the ground as a thermal battery.The lanes will still kinda be above ground. I moved (with shovel and wheel barrel) all that dirt there. That dirt is 18" to 24" deep from one end to the other. I am planning 18" deep lane. 12" deep water with 6" free board.Sump tank will be dug into the ground also.I agree on the IBC totes. Long term plan is round tanks. But if this System can pay for it self it will grow. Do to what I have learned from you. I will be growing 1140 Lbs of fish a year. 1500 gallons for fish. I need 6 IBC totes for fish and one for a sump. Stocking density at .33 lbs per gallon or close too. Totes I can get for free. Tank cost money. This needs to make money. These DWC lanes, Gravity?, that will take some doing and thinking on my end. I can pull it off though. I own my property so if I can get this done and in, it will stay. 3" PVC free flow is 8400 gph or 140 gpm max. My pump will be a 12V 4000 GPH pump. Might need a bigger pump. Maybe two depending on what I can find in 12V. I will reduce the pvc size into each tank to 3/4" for a free flow rate of 660gph or 11gpm. Out flow on tank is 2 inch back up to 3 inch. Now you are saying that I should go, tank to filter to DWC to Sump. Ok that is Do-able. fish Tanks off the ground a little do to floor, maybe a foot above DWC surface. flow into solids filter to biofilter, both 50 gallon drum. Then into DWC lane 1 at 200 sqft then into lane 2 at 200 sqft. then of into the sump. So sump tank size. Flow rate of 3960 gph or 66 gpm. 66 x 4 = 264 gallon. The sump will be an IBC tote at first which can hold 275 gal. so sounds good to me. Thank you for that. 2 tanks yeah right. had to go up to 7 totes 6 tanks. pump is out the window. Need to achive a flow rate of 4000 GPH. Head height of about 10 foot. Need to look at more pumps.WATER TEMP sorry for free, lol. low cost as possible. looking into a thermal battery. Maybe a rocket mass heater. still looking. Can run a 12v fan or blower for free. Double wall Poly for sure. GTG Thank you for your time. Roemello33 OUT or Mello Out https://youtu.be/ZY_shbkYM0A
I have a query about systems that has really bugged me recently and I was hoping you have the answer. Why do you split the flow so you have some going towards your grow area and the rest going back into the fish tank?
In regards to heating water for free… BIOMEILER. Basically, run your water through coiled flexible piping , then build up a massive compost pile around the flexible piping. I have not experimented with it myself yet but there are a number of videos out there displaying the idea. Search Biomeiler or compost powered water heater. I can't verify any results but it might be something worth researching and experimenting with.
Hi Brooklyn (and other channel followers!)
Regarding "non free" water temperature regulation, I was wondering if you have some decent (scientific) data on using ground water loops to try to help keep the water temperature stable, i.e create a heat exchanger that uses the ground thermal gradient.
The idea is to do something like a ground heat pump exchanger, minus the heat pump.
In particular, I wasn't able to find any data about how efficient this kind of system could be depending on the latitude, depth and soil composition: I'm sure it works somehow, but I suspect in at least some places it's not worth the watts you'd use to run it, so before digging a hole, putting in a coiled water line and an Arduino/ESPxx sensor to log the temperature I was searching for some more data.
Thanks for the advice love your channel and I have purchased your system building course and really liked it but when will the aquaponics God course be open for enrollment