Church project

[davidstcldfl]

About a month ago, I visited a church in Orlando. They have a farm started on the property. Of course, they have some nice raised dirt beds going, and are adding various citrus and fruit trees. They have 60 or so verti-grow towers up and running. And a handfull of chickens too.

They are pretty serious about raising some fish. They had already gotten their aquaculture licennses and had bought some tilapia.

At that time I visited, they had a large above ground swimming pool set up as a fish tank. They were pumping water from it, into a DIY bio-filter and then spraying back into the fish tank. They were doing partial water change outs, to keep the fish happy.

As for heating, they did have a small solar heater hooked to the pipe on the pump. They also had a solar blanket. During the recent cold snaps we've had, their tilapias were slowly dying off. I know they weren't blues....they had bought some other type in Orlando.

The Pastor and the gentleman running the farm, came by my place to see my system the same day. I just went back to their 'farm' yesterday to see what they had gotten done. They've been busy.......



The tank is aprox 4' x 4' x 10 feet. The boards on the side are 2 x 6's. There is insulation between the boards and liner. They are planning on building 2 more.


It's hard to see ,but, In the background, you can see the verti-grows.
( I'm standing in ankle deep water...boy, that was cold....



We are brain storming about re-vamping them for aquaponics. Of course, we'd really have to do some serious water filtering. Even then, I'm concerned about the bio-slime build up. Maybe make the holes larger, where it goes into the towers ?

We'd have to collect the water at the base of each tower. Maybe some type of a trough system, were it flows to a sump and is
pumped back to the fish tank. (?)
I know a gentlemen that did convert some towers, I'll have to check and see what he's doing and how they are working.

We talked about building some flood and drain beds. We'll have to see where that goes.....

[rfeiller]

a great idea for a church family and maybe an outreach program.

[urbanfarmer]

WOW, that's great David! That's not too far from me. I would like to see what you can get done with these good folks!

[davidstcldfl]

WOW, that's great David! That's not too far from me. I would like to see what you can get done with these good folks!

Sure, that would be great....

[stucco]

I wanna see too.

[davidstcldfl]

I wanna see too.

That would be great too....

[davidstcldfl]

Here's a basic lay out of what were working on.....



When I showed up today, they had installed the sump and had a trench dug for the drain lines. Each tank will have a high point overflow drain and the regular drain, which will have a SLO on it. Today we built a swirl for tank #1....ran the drain lines, with tees stubbed up for the future tanks...and built the bio-filter.

In the picture, the blue tank is the bio-filter......I'm trying to talk them into adding a DIY Bakki tower/degassing tower, which the water from the bio-filter will flow into the tower....then into the sump.



In the back ground, you can see the vert-grows.....I think they told me there were 120 of them, set up and running.

[stucco]

I’m guessing that Sunday is not a good day for a tour. looks killer dave We need a thumb up simile.

[davidstcldfl]

Thanks Stucco
Actually, they do their service on Saturdays.

[davidstcldfl]

We made some more progress today....
I installed the water supply line and tied it to the pump. Then we started filling the tank....



DIY swirl filter on the right, in the background.....



Here's a few of the guys that helped. We have the water comming into the tank through the DIY spray bar........



This is the one tilapia that survived from the 1st one's they had bought. I think they should name him 'survivor'.....he's lived in a 55 gal bucket for over a month now.....