A message from Jean Allen to all members of Arizona Aquaponics on Aquaponic Gardening!

My husband and I have had two aquaponic systems in the past 10 years, both of which we treated very casually as a low key experiment. However. Times are different now, and we want to consider it as a means to have fresh raw fruit and veggies at hand as well as fresh fish. Living in Kingman, temperatures can get into the 110s on some days, so we don't know if we should have an outside greenhouse (the summers are brutal) or have the system inside? Any thoughts on this issue?

I

 live in Phoenix so I know how hot it can be. I too wanted to expand so I bought a greenhouse from Sams Club. I built  new system with food grade blue drums and placed a Tilapia in the tank. I thought he will be my Ginny pig. He was fine until it got up to 110 than he died. The water got to hot for him. To be honest I was more concerned about leaching some chemical from the blue drum and at first I thought that's what happened. When I went to fish him out I noticed the water was like a sauna. I felt very bad for him. I know I raise them to eat but to slow cook him was terrible. So my thought is if you put it in a green house consider the heat. To me if you have to use a chiller or cool the greenhouse it no longer becomes cost effective. I have been trying to conger up a system like an evaporation cooler but that means using power.