This weekend we started on our backyard aquaponics system. We live in South California so we didn't feel the need for a greenhouse (yet). I looked in an almanac it does drop into the 30s for < 10 days a year so we'll probably just grow things like lettuce in the winter. We plan on raising Tilapia and we'll probably have to run a heater (or hook up some solar heating) to keep the water temperature in an acceptable range for them, during the winter.

We based this system on Wolfracer's, but instead of using square tubs for the grow beds we are using 55 gallon drums cut in half length wise since I found a source for these @ $15 per barrel. We're also going to bury our sump (55 gallon drum that I already had) to hopefully regulate the temperature a bit.

I found a 275 gallon IBC water tank to use as the fish tank. It contained a substance called Gorilla Snot (bio-degradeable erosion control) which has hardened in the bottom of the tank. I tried to scrape and clean it off but it is in there pretty good. We filled the tank up with some water and will let it sit for a while. We're hoping the Gorilla Snot starts to degrade enough that we can scrape it all off. This stuff is apparently safe (http://www.gorilla-snot.com/material-sa ... sheet.aspx) but I may try to find another IBC tank if this one doesn't work out.

I ordered a Rio 17 Hyper Flow Water Pump that is rated at 660 GPH @ 6 feet, so that should be plenty of water movement. I owned a similar pump back when I had a saltwater aquarium and it worked flawlessly for 3+ years.

My uncle has a Bobcat and he helped us out with leveling the ground and digging the hole for the sump. I was pretty amazed with how effective the auger attachment was. It took him less than 5 minutes to dig this hole. The 55 gallon drum fit perfectly inside.

The other thing we did this weekend was build the wooden frame for the grow beds. We plan on having 2 rows of grow beds, each row consisting of 3 barrels that have been cut in half. Right now they're sitting on 6 columns of 3 cinder blocks each but I think I might change it to only 2 cinder blocks each, and add another 2 columns. The more I look at this picture the more I want to change it so the barrels sit side-by-side instead of front-to-back. It shouldn't be much work to change that. I think that would help to consolidate the plumbing.

I'm not going to be able to get the barrels for another 2 weeks so we won't be doing much until then.
As you can see from the picture, the ground isn't perfectly level so we may spend some more time working on that.




Any suggestions, comments, or advice would be appreciated. Hopefully we aren't making any (huge) mistakes.