Aquaponics?

[azgardengirl77]

My husband and I have an aquaponics system that we started about 6 months ago. It is REALLY cheap if you get creative. We built a 14x35 greenhouse/hoop house, put in an inground pond that is about 800 gallons for our tilapia. The grow beds are all built out of recycled wood along with pond liner that you can get at any home improvement store and pvc pipe. We have more grow beds that we plan to add but in the mean time we have 1 4x20 grow bed, 4 2x5 grow beds and one of those plastic kids pools that is our grow bed for the duckweed (which we feed to the tilapia and our chickens). All in all for the greenhouse and all everything we have put in about $300.00 total....that's including the $200.00 for the greenhouse plastic....and we have a TON of grow space. We started with 10 pure blue Tilapia and they have started breeding, we now have about 60-80 fish total in the pond and we have sold over 200 of the offspring as fingerlings. The tilapia sales have pretty much funded the cost of the entire system plus some. Now, we live in Arizona so there is really NO need for the greenhouse, but where we live, out in the sticks, we have severe wind ALOT, so it is not necessarily to keep it warm in there but more of a shelter for the system so it doesn't get blown away.

Very cool!!!

I have been looking into this for a while and couldn't find anything for suitable heat source since I didn't want to hook up electricity.
I have come up with a wood stove made of a barrel. Burn during the day, and let the water keep it warm at night...in theory at least.

Do you have pictures? I would love to see pictures!

And welcome!!!

I posted the info for my hubby's youtube channel so you can check out our setup. He has also been looking into a way to heat the greenhouse this winter, not so much for the plants but for the fish because they die when water hits 52 degrees....he too has found what it sounds like you did...he calls it a rocket stove or something like that.