Aquaponic Gardening

A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

Good day everybody.

My brother and I have decided to get into food and fish production. We are embracing the aquaponics model. We love how it is a forced organic system. We also really love how it can be setup to be very efficient in both consumption and time commitment.

We have almost 3 acres in the North Okanagan Region of BC.. We are just now getting a small greenhouse to produce year round in a colder climate and are further to this looking to do it off grid. Automation is another area of high concern. We want to develop a sustainable, off grid, automated cold climate year round system. Wow that is a tall order, but we are game to pull it off.

Is there anyone out there a) growing in colder climate, b) growing year round, c) or completely off grid, we would be very interested in hearing from you.

A further condition is cost. We want this to be done on the down low cost wise so that it can be achievable by anyone willing to source out the products required and have the ability to put it together and implement into their system.

So far we have a typical greenhouse built on a 36 inch pony wall that will be insulated. It is 10ft x 20ft with about 12ft to the peak.

Pictured is my bro and his dog. Yup that is a wheelchair in the greenhouse, that is mine. It has mountain bike tires and 6 inch castors so I call it my yard tractor.

We are designing the inside operation today, We want to maximize our production so we are thinking we can squeeze in about 27m2 of media beds a 2700L fish tank, a swirl tank, a sump/off gassing tank and an elevated 700L reservoir tank.

We are trying to keep all the electronics as needed to a 12V system so the can be run via solar/battery for now. As we figure out a proper source of green electric power. Heat, we are at this point going to go with a rocket mass heater  with an automatic pellet feeder hopper. Going to to heat a mass to warm the green house and if needed to heat water to sustain the fish. (we are wanting Tilapia). We are going with (to start with) solar panels to charge a battery bank for additional lighting in the winter months and to run the automated systems.

So that is where we are with our system. We are open to any ideas, especially proven ones, the more minds involved the better the outcome.  So please share any ideas you have. The guidelines are: off grid, year round, scalable, obviously environmentally friendly and low to no cost so they are affordable to every one.

Hope to hear from many.

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Comment by Snowy Pines Ridge Farm on June 20, 2012 at 11:49pm

Hi!  e are just to the south of you.  Take a look at what we are up to if you want.  My wife has everything posted in the man cave section of our website.  Keep in touch!

andy

www.snowypinesridge.com

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