Mike,
Very cool. I have a fledgling system down in the Flint area. We just overheated our small frys and killed 150 of them… good luck and I hope you have a prosperous season!
Mark
Oh man that stinks! I had 20 adults die last spring due to over feeding/constipation before I figured it out. Is your system for home use or are you running it commercially? Sounds like a good size.
It’s a medium sized system. It’s in a 30 x 120 greenhouse. We need about 800 ibs of Tilapia to run the plants through the troughs. We just put the smaller Tilapia in a couple of 100 gallon troughs and that water will run through system to add nitrates which we are low on.
This system sits on an industrial compost facility and we pull hot vapor out of compost piles and heat water and flooring with a glycol loop. Natural gas would make it too expensive to operate. We’re planning on selling vegetables to local higher end restaurants when we are in full swing production.
Your facility looks interesting. Why do you have the spherical shape?
Oh nice, this is a personal project that was possibly going to turn into year around lettuce/herbs production for local restaurants, but that was shelved with the onset of the pandemic because of low restaurant traffic. We chose the dome because it sounded fun and our entire backyard is heavily sloped without a flat area, so it was easier to go with a smaller building. We use natural gas to heat the building, but all the walls are stick built and spray foamed and the entire water system is insulated with 1″ foam. We keep the 3000 gallons of the entire system heated all winter with a 600 watt aquarium heater which only runs occasionally.
This is pretty awesome. Are you still growing off of your aquaponics system?
Hey Mark, we are! We’ve been growing strawberries, pole beans, cucumbers, asparagus, and herbs for the past few months now.
Mike,
Very cool. I have a fledgling system down in the Flint area. We just overheated our small frys and killed 150 of them… good luck and I hope you have a prosperous season!
Mark
Oh man that stinks! I had 20 adults die last spring due to over feeding/constipation before I figured it out. Is your system for home use or are you running it commercially? Sounds like a good size.
It’s a medium sized system. It’s in a 30 x 120 greenhouse. We need about 800 ibs of Tilapia to run the plants through the troughs. We just put the smaller Tilapia in a couple of 100 gallon troughs and that water will run through system to add nitrates which we are low on.
This system sits on an industrial compost facility and we pull hot vapor out of compost piles and heat water and flooring with a glycol loop. Natural gas would make it too expensive to operate. We’re planning on selling vegetables to local higher end restaurants when we are in full swing production.
Your facility looks interesting. Why do you have the spherical shape?
Oh nice, this is a personal project that was possibly going to turn into year around lettuce/herbs production for local restaurants, but that was shelved with the onset of the pandemic because of low restaurant traffic. We chose the dome because it sounded fun and our entire backyard is heavily sloped without a flat area, so it was easier to go with a smaller building. We use natural gas to heat the building, but all the walls are stick built and spray foamed and the entire water system is insulated with 1″ foam. We keep the 3000 gallons of the entire system heated all winter with a 600 watt aquarium heater which only runs occasionally.