Trentham AP system

stevev

Hi all,

I built a recording studio at my place a few years back. I learnt the valuable lesson of posting up a design thread 'before you start building' with that, so here's the build thread for my large scale AP system before I start actually digging holes.

I've got a small 'test' system running really nicely which has been setup via knowledge gained from this forum and elsewhere. It's your standard IBC, 2 IBC lids for growbeds, constant flood, 10 rainbows type of system.

I'm figuring out which crops are growing well and which aren't, but the fish are doing really well. System was set up in Feb and the larger fish are almost plate size now. I'll probably take a couple out for the pan, but others will go in to a buddy's dam for fly-fishing laughs

I've done a rough layout in sketchup of a large scale (roughly 20K litres) system that I'm thinking of with pics and dimensions below.

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AP general layout.jpg [ 55.39 KiB | Viewed 2057 times ]

The 'tank' would be a hole in the ground with an EPDM liner. The grow bed frames would be fabricated and then hot-dip galvanized. The bed's would be made from marine ply with EPDM liners.

The return feed for the tank goes into a channel that I'm hoping I could get the bows to spawn in with enough flow, but i'm interested to hear if anyone has any ideas about that.

I'm thinking of three smaller pumps to supply each bed so there's a redundancy in case one craps out. I haven't included the feed lines for the beds to keep things clear at the moment.

I'd be looking to put small poly tunnels over each bed but i've left those out at the moment, again, for clarity.

I've got all the earthmoving gear I need to dig the hole, I can weld up all the frames and construct everything DIY. So mainly i'm looking for some input regarding the layout and any possible pitfalls that it might have as it's basically a larger version of the test system that I have running at the moment.

All help and ideas are much appreciated.

All the best,

Steve

skeggley

Welcome to the forum Steve.
Your own recording studio and earthmoving equipment.... Oh yeah!
Looking forward to your build, keep us updated.

stevev

cheers skeggly. Probably won't get on to this build for 12 months at a minimum as there's a house reno to do first. But as I learnt with the studio, you can't plan too far in advance!!

all the best,

steve

stevev

here's the test system....

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thsdragoon

I like the idea you've got going. Will this big build be a deep water culture system, a constant flood with media, or a ebb and flow type?

stevev

thsdragoon wrote:

Will this big build be a deep water culture system, a constant flood with media, or a ebb and flow type?

I was thinking constant flood with media as that's what I'm running at the moment and it hasn't caused me any problems so far.

I'am however, open to suggestions on why this might not be a good idea, and why one of the other types of setup might be better.

all the best,

Steve

stevev

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....here's another idea I was throwing around for the tank. Excavate and then form-pour a couple of concrete dividers between to break the tank in 3.

I figure I can have 3 seperate fish sizes going at once so I'm not harvesting a whole heap of fish at the same time.

A vertical stainless steel mesh at the top of the concrete dividers would allow water to flow between the tanks so PH, temp etc would be consistent throughout, but fish wouldn't be able to migrate between tanks.

I'm still working on an idea to for covering the tops of the tank, both for fish protection and leagal reasons.

all the best,

Steve

Stuart Chignell

Hi Steve you are just down the road from me.

If you wanted to have a look at my system I could show you a lot of things not to do

stevev

Stuart Chignell wrote:

If you wanted to have a look at my system I could show you a lot of things not to do

That'd be great Stuart, much appreciated. So far my 'test' system has been going pretty well, but i'm guessing that you're running a larger system which probably has it's own challenges.

all the best,

steve

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