Dan Brown...I have tried to reach you pertaining to outlet for Basil / Herbs etc etc. Your Friend site seems frozen...would you PLEASE e-mail me ...victor@zalindafarms.com

Thank You

Thanks for becoming a member of the Sweet Water group, Dan.  I see your name around a lot these days between this site and the Facebook group.  Look forward to getting to know you and your systems better!

Hi Daniel, sorry for my late reply. I did not check the website for a couple of days. Cheers Werner

The 64' south facing wall has 3 doors framed into it so I can expand this greenhouse to the south. I can add 3 hoop style cold frames or 3 bays on a gutter connect setup but only time will tell on what I do. I have 14 acres so I can expand as needed. I have great water and I am zoned for agriculture. I am going to use a wood stove water boiler for raising the temperatures in my fish tanks. There is a lot of wood were I live and I can always go to the mountains for more if needed.

So that is what I have been planing. If there is anything that sounds like it is not going to work or I should be thinking of something else let me know what you think.
Delete Comment

In the last few weeks I finished all the wood framing and dug 2 4'x8' holes in the ground 4.5' deep. These are going to be my fish tanks. I am modeling the fish tanks from the Growing Powers fish tanks with 2 troughs above them that will have media filled in them an be my bio-filter. Each tank will be between 1000 and 1200 gallons. I then want to pump water to the top trough and then gravity feed to the bottom trough and then go out to rafts using DWC. I will do leafy greens and herbs in the rafts and will be able to have 2 48x28' rafts and 2 48x24' rafts. I want to try to put a test row of Dutch Buckets in the mix and do tomatoes allowing the runoff to go back to the fish tanks. I will also setup sprout tables like the friendly's have to start seeds in, when the weather permits.

Basically I will have either 2 systems duplicated for testing in the 24x64 greenhouse or combine the 2 fish tanks and run this system all together. Not sure what I should do. I want to do something real small at first so I can see what I need to do and learn before I go to anything else. So I may just fill up one tank 1/4 or 1/2 of the way and only use one raft setup. I will look at maybe getting a small micro system or family system plan set from the Friendly's to make sure that I get the correct info on a small setup before I go any further. I have been told that the gravel media grow beds will not work for a high density system but for some reason Growing Power uses this and they just keep on putting in worms to take care of the solids. I will look at swirl filters and other things down the road.

Thanks Daniel for the info. I read through it and also really liked what you had to say in the article you wrote, excellent job. First of all I have never grown a thing with fish only in the ground organically. I have had a small greenhouse for 7 years and have mostly grown heirloom tomatoes. In talking with stores and small restaurants, letting them taste my tomatoes, I would get a lot of great feedback and they would ask do I sell them.

I have been reading and looking at hydroponics for many years and then started to read about aquaponics. There is no question that is what I need to do. In my research I looked at Growing power and Friendly Aquaponics the most and decided that I would build a 12x32 building. I wanted this to have storage and some processing capabilities along with maybe starting seeds and a fish hatchery. But thought that I would have the building and keep it open on what I would use it for.

I added a 16 foot wall to both ends of the utility room making a wall 64' long and ran out of money last year. This year I added 2 24' end walls and a 64' south facing wall. The Utility room wall is about 12' high and the south facing wall is only 10' high on the greenhouse. The roof system will be a rebar roof that I have been working on that will be slopped from the shed and go up another 2 or 3 feet then back to the 10 foot wall on the south side of the greenhouse. It will have post and beams in the greenhouse to support it as well as purlins. I will use double poly.

Depending on which model of AeroGarden you have you can set the pump to whatever cycle you want (John and I thought that might be useful someday). I would look on the website in the PDFs of the instruction manuals. Look at the Quick Start guide for your garden. If that doesn't do it, John's customer service team is pretty good and I would call them.