Saturday, November 22, 2014

A cool convo about aquaponic pond-liners

I have a pond question. I would like to incorporate an in ground pond as my fish tank. I currently have a 275 IBC setup but would like to expand to a larger in ground fish tank. Something in the neighborhood of 10'x6' by 4-3 ft deep. This would be about 1800-1350 gallons. My question is what is a suitable liner materiel (ie. rubber, poly)? What is the rule of thumb for grew bed size per gallon of water? Also, most pond builds i see on youtube use mortar to hold the rocks in place. Is mortar okay to use around edible fish? TIA

Paul D. Ulici there are liners, EPDM works, so does the DURASKRIM stuff. HOWEVER, the big problem with this bigger size tank you're thinking of, is the fact that any liner at that size is going to be very expensive. You can find long liners cheap, but wide ones are not cheap. 
Concrete is fine for a pond, and the fish would be most likely ok. The main problem is that concrete will keep raising your PH unless you coat it with something. Some people have used Thoroseal. 
Personally I've thought of creating a larger tank, and if you're going to make something that is lined (out of concrete) I think a good option is to make it narrower and longer, so you don't need a really wide liner. You can find 10 foot wide liners much cheaper than anything wider. 
I like those tanks someone posted not long ago that were made out of plastic sheeting or whatever that was. no need for a liner, and quite big.

Chris Magree i ordered my liner from webb's online...firestone  (20' x 20' liner, $250.)








  • Mike La Compte Thanks Paul for the info. I will look into it. Chris, what are the dimensions of your pond and liner?
  • Chris Magree i got the 20x20 liner ($250ish) my pond is odd shaped....basically 12x15x4
    28 mins · Unlike · 2
  • Mike La Compte It looks amazing. And the price of the liners are alot cheaper then i thought on Webb's. Since yours is raised how deep did you dig to get the 4 foot depth?

Chris Magree it's just raised 8" (cement blocks, concrete, rebar) so i could have a shelf around the edges for plants ... so i still dug down at least 3' (probably more) but the sides got built up as i was digging down...so that helped...but if you do that make sure you compress the loose soil before you build on the edges....










  • Jim Joy Another issue is you need as much volume of media bed as water volume for fish minimum. Up to four times the volume of grow bed volume is better. If only 1:1, lightly populate the fish. Or, you will have to start doing water changes if the grow beds can't convert ammonia fast enough or plants can't consume nitrates fast enough. Have fun.
    17 mins · Like · 1
  • Mike La Compte the side walls was going to be my next question but you beat me to it  Thanks Chris Magree
  • Chris Magree i'm not sure what angle the main pond is...the sides are pretty steep but not so much they'd ever cave in....i dug it by hand and made sure to carve out "steps" in one corner so i could get out without hurting myself....lol
    12 mins · Like · 1
  • Mike La Compte So if i do the math right, for a 1800 gallon fish tank i would need 7200 volume of grow beds. This would equal about 6 beds that are 20x3x3. I may want to re evaluate the fish pond size  Thanks Jim Joy
    6 mins · Like

No comments:

Post a Comment