Aquaponics anyone?

I was told we could have free 275 gallon water totes for aquaponics, by our local county agent. He said they would come from the water treatment plant. Well, when we had 12" of water in our crawl space & had to pump it out into the roadside ditch, I called the extension agent to see if we could get some of the totes, so we could save the water for our garden. He told me they were ONLY for aquaponics & HE had to call to request them. :eek: :confused: I would eventually use the totes & saved water for aquaponics, but the answer was NO!

So, I started looking on Craig's List. The closest totes were 2 hours away & they wanted $100 each (vs. free). :he we wanted at least 3 totes, & they wouldn't fit in the back of our pickup because we have a Leer cap over the bed. That meant we needed a trailer.

Our neighbor has a 16 foot trailer, but he wouldn't want to drive 4 hours round trip.

Today we had him over, to discuss the options. It turned out he wanted a couple & we wanted four. Before he came over, I decided to try calling the water treatment plant & play dumb (leaving the extension agent out of it), saying we wanted to save water, but would also be using them for aquaponics. It turned out the plant manager was fine with is using the totes for water reclaimation AND aquaponics. He had SIX totes and said we could have all of them!

So, today our neighbor hooked his trailer on hos truck & we drove to the water treatment plant. He gets two totes (for his trouble) & we get four. They will call us when they get more in the future!

THEN, as we were getting ready to leave, the forklift operator mentioned they had blue & clear 55 gallon barrels & we could have all we wanted of those. We have been wanting to get 55 gallon plastic barrels, to save roof water from the chicken coop & goat shed, to water the animals. So, we took 4 blue barrels & our neighbor took 2 clear. SCORE! & DOUBLE SCORE!!

One more thing: just wanted to let y'all know what was in the totes. They contained phosphate, which I think he said they use to keep their outlet pipe from plugging up. He said it is easily washed out & suggested that we use a strong spray from the garden hose to rinse the tote 3-4 times.
 
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Brilliant move, going around that extension agent. Sounds like he likes playing Mr. Important. I am so proud of your SCORE!! Wow! That is awesome!!! You can NEVER have too many totes and barrels! :weee

That give me an idea......I should call the water company we buy water from and see if they have totes and barrels.
 
That is amazing Devonviolet! Yay :celebrate Bay, why don't you piggyback on Devon and maybe she can get some for you when the plant gets more.

Devon, I think I would take that plant manager a dozen eggs. Heck, maybe the forklift operator too!

Mary
 
ninnymary said:
That is amazing Devonviolet! Yay :celebrate Bay, why don't you piggyback on Devon and maybe she can get some for you when the plant gets more.

Devon, I think I would take that plant manager a dozen eggs. Heck, maybe the forklift operator too!

Mary
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That might be a good idea, except that the plant manager wanted to make sure we lived in Hopkins County before we could have the totes.

That's an awesome idea, Mary, about taking each the three guys, that helped us out, a dozen eggs. I will definitely do that! :)
 
awesome find! i'm curious now if i could call up my local water treatment plant if they have some they would part with. there is someone on Craigslist that sells food grade containers all the time but he wants more than i'd like for them. in Portsmouth we have a brewery that tends to give for free their excess containers but i can never get them before they are gone.
 
Years ago, I met a guy who grew catfish in those 55 gal. barrels under a lean to on the N side of a small shed to keep the water fairely cool with great success. Used 4 barrels side by side and staggered the start of each by 4 -6 weeks for new fish fry ( he would buy 25 fry at a time from a catfish farm ) so that he had a steady supply of catfish to harvest and eat whenever they were needed. The barrels were covered with 1" x 1" welded wire mesh to prevent the fish from jumping out. Also, there were lights over the barrels to attract flying insects that then would drop down into the water for the fish to eat. He used small aeration pumps to pump in air to the bottom of the barrels to oxygenate the water and fed them commercial fish pellets daily. One could raise Tilapia, Perch, or Sunfish instead if one prefered those insead of catfish.
 
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