Very interested in learning. As my profile stated....just learning but want to get something up and running quickly. I would love to come up to see your place. If I need to wait till December that is fine, but if you have any time sooner let me know. I live in Conway.

Thank you for reaching out. Thomas

Thanks for the friend request. I'm looking forward to attending your workshop and to gaining from the vast experience on this forum.

:D

Wow was that website you sent me ever cool. (Actually all 3 were cool, but I liked yours best) I have lots more reading to do tomorrow, right now I have to get ready for a seminar on Leadership and building communities. Starts soon so I better get moving!

we hlso have an abundance of small river pebbles but one og my main concern is;in the raft system, what do you use to keep the plant anchored in the floating raft?

They breed in my pond very well, I'm just trying to see it they will breed in an IBC.

yeah just one, they are not big fish. I have more tanks, just have to find the time to use them all. I was thinking of trying to breed the catfish.

Hey TCLynx, I appreciate you sharing your knowledge with me. I'm new at this.

Well, I'm just in the planning stage right now. As far as fish goes, I would like anything that can do well year round without a greenhouse in my area and that tastes OK. I live in CA near the coast between San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara. The coldest it gets here would be down to about 25 degrees, so I was thinking about having a year-round growing system without a greenhouse. I actually have three of these 1500 gallon military water tanks that I got for free from a friend. I thought I would just use the others for ponds. The tanks from the vietnam era and are made of rubber, so I was going to line them with PVC tarp material that was some kind of heavy duty tent from the military. By the way, my dad has a rather large quantity of this reinforced PVC material in large sizes if anyone would like to buy it from him! No, I'm not some kind of military "fortunate son", really, it ain't me! Thanks.

Thank you for your thoughts. I will be picking everyones brain that will allow me to over the next few months I am sure.

TC I re-plumbed the valve. You can see my blog for how it is plumbed now. I think this will work better. I know have the tank being feed on Valve 1 and 4 so that is has enough time to recover. I also fixed the liner so it goes to the top. Tomorrow I will see how it well this works. Zanks.

Thank you for comments knee deep in reading and understanding how site works will get back in a few days

i have a 15 sqm space to set up this aquponics but i dont know how to start, what to buy and what to do

The valve is working great. I did like you suggested and glued some of the fitting after they came off. When I turn it off and on the backflow increases the outflow and blows loose some of the unglued fittings. This weekend I am back from NY and I am going to solve the Tank height problem. To compensate for it I had the hose adding some water to the sump/float tank as it would run dry due to the fish tank leaking at its highest level. I did plumb the outside runs and they are working great. I may put one of the flows that go back to the fish tank to the gravel bed as if I can't get the fish tank to stop leaking when full. I want it to work eventually without adding any water so this winter it won't get cold water added. The water in the fish tank has cleared up a lot and when I work on the liner I will have to drain it down half way. That will clear up the water even more. I can see the bottom now. I added some small fish to the other float bed and feed them every 4 days or so. They seem to have taken care of the mosquitos. When I get the main float tank stabilized I will add a few to it for the same reason. The gravel bed is doing great. So more glueing this weekend and some work on the fish tank liner. I will keep you posted.

We are looking at using recycled bathtubs for both the fish tank (fiberglass) and the grow bed (fairly light weight metal w/some sort of coated finish in pretty good shape - no chunks,etc.). We are looking at using hydroton as our grow media. It sounds like we will need to be careful with covering the fish tank, both to prevent escape and to minimize algae blooms.

Thanks for the input. What we are trying to accomplish is to keep the system ratios compatible. We share our greenhouse space and are not able to take over enough of it currently (nor do we have the budget at the moment) to grow the amount of vegies required when using 800 gallons. We want to keep our input/output loops as tight as possible and thought that minimizing our system for now makes the most sense. The large existing tank is used as a heat mass/sink for our high altitude location and we would be diminishing the overall greenhouse design by draining it down to the amount of gallons we could currently use. So, that is the idea of isolating another tank within the larger tank.

It was great to meet you! Went to your web site ,Ilove how inventive you are with your growing. Keeps me inspired! Paul Ellinghuysen

Ron came over and took a dozen fish today. The water is clearing up quite a lot. I got 500 strawberries today. I planted 100 today and will plant 100 and plumb the outside rows. I also planted the Aliflor gravel bed with some cabbage and Broccoli. Thanks so much for the help. I will do some gluing tomorrow also.

This is the second set and generally doesn't get slime. By the time it gets pumped into that grow bed it has already gone into the first set of grow beds and 13 x 5 gallon buckets. I would almost drink it by that point. :P It makes using the small plumping easy, which is not too ugly, which is great for the indoor system.. Also, it's easy to remove\change\add to.

Ya, I had alot of the media removed because I was finalizing and adjusting the U syphons. Have you ever tried to move hydroton aside? It doesn't obey so i had to remove some to get to the drains ;) I have media filled to the top now. As you said, it does dry out on top.

The new pumps are for the outdoor system. The outdoor pumps will move indoors which will increase my height\GPH so I can add more towers and beds. The outdoor system uses PVC to get from the pond to the beds. Going back to the pond requires less of a pump because it's lower elevation.

Thanks for the tips. Did you like it?