That's a good amount of growth for catfish.  It's going to be interesting in 6 months to a year when you compare your numbers and see if the higher quaility feed increased the percentages.

Not much new going on in our system worth posting.  I guess I could snap a picture of our filter I trimmed out in cedar but it's nothing fancy.  I'm not impressed with the filter box just yet.  The filter itself does not seem to be catching the real fine particles.  I will try and post a link where we got them and I do believe they have one grade finer that I will order and try.

We did have a little scare this monday when we went up to check on everybody.  The belt had broken on our greenhouse fan and the water temp was 93 degrees!  Luckily it did not hurt the fish but if it was August we may have had floaters.  Got it fixed and threw in an extra airstone for the fish.

I'm hoping to see a good cucumber report from you soon.  


Edit: grammar

I'll post more detailed pictures soon.

The cucumbers are doing well.  



I put some netting down so it will climb.  These are pickling cucumbers but they can obviously be eaten like English cucumber, only they'll be smaller.



My garden is currently being ravaged by the fungus Verticillium dahliae.  Both cucumbers and horseradish are susceptible.  I'm really getting scared here.  It's marching through my peppers and okra.  

I had/have a small infestation of Cabbage worms on my horseradish.  I've picked them off by hand.  Normally I blast things with permethrin, but the latter is extremely toxic to fish.  The ones I took off were fed to the fish.

MEALYBUGS just cleaned out half my bed due to the bastards!!!! 12ga and fire works but how do i get rid of them and not FO the SO with my temper..Or killing my fish

I found this. C4 will be along shortly and he may know something better I would try diatomacious earth before anything because it will nor hurt the fish.  Maybe an onion or garlic spray?


An aqueous solution containing 50% v/v isopropyl alcohol and 1% w/v sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) (or any household detergent) is effective against mealybugs. Isopropyl alcohol dissolves their outer waxy covering, while SDS attacks mealybug bodies.
Diatomaceous earth can be applied around the stem of the plant. Diatomaceous earth contains small silica particles that are trapped within the joints of ants. They cause irritation and eventual death. Diatomaceous earth is especially useful for an infestation that has developed a symbiotic relationship with local ants.

or

INSECTICIDAL POTASSIUM SOAP

Insecticidal potassium soap has a high salt content which when sprayed on susceptible insects desiccates and kills them. Being a contact insecticide, the target insect must come into direct contact with the spray, so good coverage is essential for optimum results. Susceptible insects include aphids, mealybug, some mite species, thrip and whitefly. Potassium based soap products available on the home garden market include, ‘Moeco Neemtech’, ‘Yates Green Earth aphid-mite spray’, ‘Multicrop BugGuard’ and ‘Spraytech or Yates Naturasoap’.

That wont hurt my fish? I have held off on fear of harming them.

The diatomaceous earth will not hurt the fish and becomes inert when wet.  The Insecticidal Potassium Soap sounds ok too.  I would use any of these including neem oil without hesitation.  If you are worried about these try the garlic/onion mixture first.  

Thanks liquid death will rain down upon those little bastards. Not as rewarding as either and a match but probably better for the plants.

We here love the smell of cut exoskeleton and diatomaceous earth in the mornings.

Yeah, those definitely sound safe.  I ended up picking them off by hand and feeding them to the fish.  The horseradish is growing fast enough that I'm not too concerned, and it's pretty easy to spot the cabbage worms.  

I have to do more updating.  I will get to it.  I've been busy with work, kids, other projects but things are slowing down finally.

I stopped by the office today to check on the fish and found this really neat bacteria colony that is growing on a piece of filter in our flood and drain bed.  I just think it's incredible how everything works together in these systems to make a habitable environment for many living organisms.

That's great!

We had a bunch of rain and my water clouded up badly.  It wasn't algae because the tarps keep the light to a minimum.  I have a friend that came over and he really thought it was a bacterial bloom.  I drained off some water enough to see to the bottom and there was a dead Yellow Perch.  It had been acting weird ever since I put it in there and I suspect a parasitic infection affecting the brain.  It would swim right up to my face without any fear.  Bizarre.  It also wasn't eating.  I should have thrown it out but thought maybe it would get better.  It was probably on the bottom for 2 to 3 days.  I got it out.  I think the water though may have been clouding up even before then so I get the sense that the heavy rains that altered the water chemistry enough to trigger a bacterial bloom and the dead fish did not help.  

In any case, I cut back the feeding in the big tank because I couldn't see to the bottom and now 2 to 3 days later, the water clarity is coming back.  Bacterial blooms are notorious for coming and then going like that without any obvious cause, though in this case the dead fish certainly made it worse but I think the trigger was about 10 days of rain on and off.  

As you know, the bacteria responsible for blooms are free-floating and not the Nitrosomonas or Nitrobacter.  

I did also have to move the White Perch to the sump tank and I have been feeding them live Golden Shiners that I catch at a local pond.  They simply did not want to eat the dead frozen smelt.  They're eating the live fish though and I'm trying to transition them to the smelt.  It's interesting to see the White Perch and Channel catfish (also in the sump tank) interact.  It's also fascinating to watch the White Perch "hunt" the Golden Shiners.  The White Perch will peak around the pipe actively looking for the shiners.  

The cucumbers are flowering and I see a few small cucumbers, only 1/2" long.  I'll get some pictures up.

More to come.

I started a thread at Northeastshooters.com back in the spring so I could do a step-wise explanation/description of my aquaponics system this year.  Once I'm done with the thread, I will repost it here.  This is what I posted there today.  If you're interested in a what I think is a reasonably good explanation of aquaponics, you can quickly read through that thread here.

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Let me summarize where we left off:

1) The expanded shale in the grow bed had enough of a bacterial population that we could add fish to the system and be assured that any ammonia produced by the fish would be converted to nitrate.

2) The bacterial species that perform this conversion include the Nitrosomonas that converts ammonia into nitrite, and then Nitrobacter that converts nitrite to nitrate.  The bacteria does this as a source of energy, using oxygen from the atmosphere to oxidize ammonia to nitrite and nitrate.  Since these bacteria use inorganic substances as a source of energy, they are called autotrophes.  This is referred to as chemosynthesis as opposed to autotrophic plants and algae which perform photosyntesis.

However, we are now posed with a dilemma:  How do we remove nitrate from the water?  Do we even need to remove nitrate from the water?  The answer lies in trying to recreate as natural an environment as we can for the fish.  In nature, nitrate levels are typically very low, usually less than 20mg/Liter, and more often less than 10mg/L.  My well water which is the source of the water for the aquaponics system doesn't contain enough nitrate to register on my testing kit.

While nitrate is far less toxic than ammonia or nitrite, it can reach toxic levels if there is nothing removing it from your aquaponics system.  The two methods that are used to remove it are:

1) Water changes.  This is why aquarium hobbyists do partial water changes in their aquariums, maybe 20% of the water per week.  Obviously, the amount of water change can vary depending on how heavily the fish are fed, and how many fish/weight of fish there is.  The more feeding, the more ammonia is produced from the metabolism of protein in the feed, the more ammonia is released by the fish into the water, and the more nitrate is produced from the bacteria converting the ammonia to nitrate.  While many aquarium hobbyists keep a certain amount of plants in their aquarium, it usually grossly insufficient to keep the ammonia levels down unless you were to keep few small fish and a large amount of plants.  It would also be critical to have enough light for the plants to grow and stay healthy.  While there is a role for water changes in an aquaponics system, it is much more ideal to keep enough plants in your system to absorb enough nitrate from the water to keep the level low.  Ideally, this is below 40mg/L but this can be difficult to maintain.

2) The second method to remove nitrate from the water is using plants growing in the grow bed.  Plants need nitrogen to manufacture proteins and other substances.  Plants cannot capture nitrogen from the atmosphere and must rely on naturally occurring nitrogen such as from lightening (nitrogen oxides formed when oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere react at high heat), bacteria that can capture or "fix" atmospheric nitrogen gas to ammonia, etc.  The process of turning atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia is called "fixing nitrogen" because you are taking the relatively inert nitrogen gas and converting it into ammonia or the ammonium ion that can then be used by the plant.   Most plants actually prefer to absorb their nitrogen in the form of nitrate, but they also have ammonia transporters that can absorb ammonia also directly from the water.

The following picture illustrates the nitrogen cycle whereby nitrogen gas is fixed by bacteria, then incorporated by plants, which are in turn eaten by animals, which then excrete ammonia in the form of actual ammonia as fish do, or as ammonia combined with carbon dioxide as mammals and many animals do, or as uric acid which is the preferred method of birds and reptiles.  There are bacteria that can actually break down nitrate back into it's nitrogen and oxygen gas components and I will discuss this again at a later date.



The point here is that nitrate must be removed from the water in the aquaponics system.  The basis of aquaponics is to use plants to remove nitrate, thereby creating a closed-loop system.  Theoretically, the only thing that is added to the system is food for the fish and enough water to replace that lost by evaporation.  The end product is fish meat and either a fruit or vegetable, or the plant leaves themselves are consumed.  Since some fish like tilapia will eat plants, you can even take the system one step further and feed, say, spinach grown in the system back to the fish.

Now for the plants!

This is the grow bed after cycling with bacteria.  You can add plants before the cycling is finished as they can absorb ammonia, nitrite and nitrate, but I didn't do so.  I did run into some problems with the horseradish as I grew them indoors and then didn't acclimatize the plants slowly enough.  This led to burned leaves and the plants had to regrow outside again.  Not a big deal but I probably would have planted them earlier.  I chose horseradish mainly because they have done well in my system in the past two years.  They have several attractive features:  they grow upright and therefore save space.  They produce both an edible root and also edible leaves (yes, they're edible!).  They grow at a wide range of temperatures, tolerating both extremes of cold and heat, although they are known for doing well in cooler weather.  They also like a lot of water.  The one thing I've found with the roots is that they may develop in two ways:  Sometimes they will form a nice, thick root, and other times they form a very fine, large 'hair ball'.  I'm not sure what the factors are that lead to one or the other.  The hair ball definitely has a much larger surface area for collecting nitrate, but the root is edible.  So either way I'm happy.



This is the horseradish growing in peat after they regrew their leaves (I left them outdoors).  Horseradish is extremely easy to grow from even a tiny piece of root planted in the ground.





I washed all the peat off the roots.  You could certainly take the mesh off the peat and plant it directly like that in the expanded shale grow bed, but I'd rather not have any soil/peat in the grow bed.



I used steamer clam shells to mark the areas in the grow bed where I would plant the horseradish.  The total number of plants was 36 if I recall correctly.  I did also plant some cucumber at one end of the grow bed.



Planting completed



I didn't want the water splashing up onto the plants and the inlet for the water into the grow bed from the fish tank worked out very nicely.



The plants are in expanded shale only with no soil.



After a few weeks of growth:





View from the fish tank end:



This is a picture of the horseradish plants two days ago on 08/09/2014:





Long view:



Side view:




Close-up.  Here you can see the cucumber plants:



These are close-ups of the cucumber plants from a while ago.  I planted them in the grow bed after the first two leaves emerged, so all the growth you are seeing was mostly in the grow bed:





I put netting over the sump tank so the cucumber plants could climb along it:







Other side:



I started off with a total of 6 cucumber plants but one of them died.  The following are pictures of the cucumbers from yesterday (08/09/14).





I'll eat this one today:



Small ones growing:







This is where the grown plants enter the grow bed.  Some of the lower leaves can turn brown.  I do have what I believe is Verticillium Wilt fungus throughout my garden and they can infect cucumbers, but I don't think that is what is happening here.  The cucumbers are not wilting in the sun at all.



Now for the fish!  These went in back in June.  I only have pictures of them going into the system, and only of the Channel catfish which all went into the sump tank.  It's too stressful on them to remove them from the water and weigh them mid-season.  I will of course weigh them when they come out of the system.  I have goldfish, Yellow Perch, White Perch and Brown Bullhead catfish and those were all weighed going in.

First guy to go in:



I let the water acclimatize:







The Channel catfish all weighed about 5 grams when I bought them last fall.  Going into the system, they weighed between 40 grams and 300 grams.  Quite a spread!



You should handle the fish by hand whenever possible as netting can often tear the pectoral fin.  Also, make sure to wet your hands before grabbing them.



Weighing can be a challenge as they don't like to sit still!  The scale is in 20 gram increments but you can usually measure down to within 10 grams.  That's enough for my purposes.



Channel catfish can be distinguised from other catfish by the deeply forked tail fin and the characteristic spots on the juvenile fish:



That's it for now. If you have any questions, please let me know.

Excellent, excellent write up C4.  Your knowledge of chemistry and the nitrogen cycle far surpass mine.  One might think you had a degree in it. Your plants look great and you are going to have some nice cucumbers!  I will reread later tonight and edit this post but I did learn a thing or two about how plants fixate nitrogen and I am curious about the bacteria that can convert nitrate back to nitrogen.  

One thing delicious_bass pointed out is the chlorosis present in the horseradish leaves.  What is chlorosis?



If you look at the original leaves from the small plants before going into the grow bed, they have a nice green color, including the area between the veins:



Here you can see that the green color is much lighter between the veins of the older leaves from the most recent picture:



My cucumbers have some chlorosis on the edge of the leaves but otherwise seem to be doing well in this regard.

Unfortunately, many things can cause chlorosis including:

1) a specific mineral deficiency in the soil, such as iron or magnesium
   
2) deficient nitrogen and/or proteins
   
3) a soil pH at which minerals become unavailable for absorption by the roots
   
4) poor drainage (waterlogged roots)
 
5) damaged and/or compacted roots

6) pesticides and particularly herbicides may cause chlorosis, both to target weeds and occasionally to the crop being treated
   
7) exposure to sulphur dioxide
   
8) ozone injury to sensitive plants

It's sometimes difficult to pinpoint the exact cause or causes of chlorosis.  In the past, I have had good green color in tomato leaves.  Two things I have done differently this year include using mainly horseradish in the grow bed and so any problem with them will be more noticeable, and I've kept around 2 ppt of salt in the water to protect the fish.  One drawback of this is the sodium chloride can affect the horseradish adversely since it tolerates salt poorly.  I thought at these levels it should be ok, but it is affecting the plant.  The pH of the water is also higher than I would like it to be but I'm basically stuck with it unless I want to start playing with acids to acidify the water which I'm not too keen on doing.  For instance, even though I have good iron levels in the water, the higher pH may make it more difficult to get absorbed into the plants.  The same applies for other nutrients.  

What I have done is big water changes and I am not going to add any salt to the water and see if that helps out the leaves.  There are so many different things to think about when putting a system together that it's hard to address all of them.  And fixing one problem will often result in worsening another one.  

I'll be updating this thread within a week.  Unfortunately, I had a bad outbreak of ich that I didn't recognize quickly enough that hit my Channel catfish hard.  I'll post more about it.

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I hate to hear that.  Hope they get back on track.  I will be posting an expiriment my niece and I are doing for her 6th grade science class sometime around the first of November.  We have taken 3 different varieties of seeds and comparing growth; Aquaponically watered seeds vs. Household tap watered seeds.  At the end of the month we will see which produced more.

Cool

I was swamped in September with work and let things go to pot a little.

I have some exciting ideas for next summer.  I've decided (unless I change my mind) to rig up a solar heating system with some black tubing.  I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to set it up, but I've thought of a couple of ways:

1) I would suspend growing anything for a year and use the top of the grow bed to put down black plastic tubing.  I would cover the grow bed with some plastic and create a greenhouse effect.  I would really like to get the water temperature much higher than just relying on the outdoor temperature.

2) The other option is to set up the black plastic tubing next to the system and heat it that way.  I really think I could get the system much hotter than it has been.

Anyway, I will post more about this.

I'll update this hopefully this week.  Stay tuned.

Delicious bass how do the tiliapia grow? How long does it take to get them to plate size? My garage isn't heated so I don't know how long into winter I could go but my wife likes the idea of fresh lettuce most of the year.

I harvest Mozambique tilapia twice a year in my system and they are what do best for where I live.   That is fingerling to 3/4+ lbs (harvest size). Our winters are mild and I keep my water heated to about 80 degrees when temperatures drop below 55.  I was a little slow getting my heater up and my water got to 45 degrees and they were dying.  

I have never had them catch any disease or Ich and they tolerate poor water quality quite well for short periods.  

On the other hand I have caught wild blues from the lake before I had tilapia  and they stayed sick and were territorial.  I'd rather have catfish because it's what I like to eat....  

For the first year I had my system I only used goldfish and they produced enough waste to give me fresh beautiful lettuce for a long time.   They are also very hard to kill and tolerate about any kind of condition you can throw at them.

I need to post some recent pictures as I changed my rainwater backup and started all my soil garden seeds in my grow bed.

I use gold fish and it's in a green house so we grow year round.
But the only things that grow well are cabbage kohlrabi kale and tomatoes. strawberries look strong this year as well as celery.
we haven't tried eating the goldfish but they're getting pretty darn big.
Tilapia are illegal without a permit in New Mexico so I would have to drive to Texas to get some which isn't out of the question.

We have to get permission and they have to be inside no chance of them getting into the wild.  I just want to be able to eat a few fish by doing this. I don't know why but just want the full circle of things going on. I'm still reading all I can and looking at different systems. My son is very interested in doing this also. What size tanks should I start with? Should I start with a small system to do minnows and gold fish?

I think for just getting started you should keep it simple and don't go larger than 100 gallon tank.   The IBC tote idea is pretty simple to follow and will work ok.  You can most certainly go even smaller.  Our stocking density is .25lb/tank gallons but it's really dependent on how much you feed the fish and environmental factors.

Starting with goldfish or minnows is smart and if you go back to page 11 and look at my first post I ran my home system for a year on goldfish.   There are quite a few things to aid with the "full circle" such as incorporating worm composting and growing edibles for the fish.

+1

I think starting small is the way to go to make sure you understand the concepts.  You may even decide to stop while you're ahead.  If you read the beginning of this thread, you'll see that I started with a 55 gallon barrel with goldfish and wild brown bullhead catfish.  A modest beginning but more than enough to make sure I knew what I was doing.



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I'm doing my first harvest and weight of tilapia today out of my home system.   Some of these boys are pretty big after C4 sent me the Aquamax food!  

I will also be cleaning out my gravel grow bed that is full of muck.   While I have it partly empty I am converting it to a flood and drain instead of constant trickle.  This means I will need an additional sump because when the siphon breaks I will be loosing X gallons of water very fast.

The most accurate method to determine X would be to measure how many GPM will come out of my hose bib then see how long it takes to fill the gravel bed.  To do this I will simply time how long it takes me to fill up a 5 gallon bucket then divide 60 by this number times 5 gallons.  All you do from there is time how long it takes to fill the bed up and multiply that by your GPM.  This number will give me the size of sump capacity and the
amount of water my bed holds.  

Hopefully I can get some pictures and a good write up by next week.

" />
Fish

" />
Duck weed for fish.

" />
Kohlrabi gone crazy.


Old cabbage plants that I have left for a year to see what they did. Nothing much.

" />
Volunteer lettuce at a leak...

Two 100 gal tanks linked together one for duck weed and one with a bunch of $0.10 goldfish that are now 3 to 6 inches.
An automatic feeder that lasts for a week. The grow beds dump into the duck weed and send some to the fish for supplement feeding.
Two grow beds one ebb and flow one constant and a 10 gutter down pipe growing strawberries.

It all prototype ideas in my spare time I hope to build a large system this summer.

Just thought I would share.

Yes!  Pictures would be great.  My only issue with the Aquamax is it floats.  For Tilapia it's perfect.  But I had a hard time getting my Channel catfish to take it, even though it is designed for Tilapia and Channel catfish in ponds.  I switched to a sinking pellet for the winter indoors, also lower in protein.  Trout need 50% protein feed but Tilapia and catfish do better with lower percentages.

Awesome!  Do you have access to Tilapia or catfish?  Will you try that this season?  

Not really.
I have been told that a fishery that is 130 miles from me will give me catfish but I have a brother in TX that comes out every deer season so I might have him smuggle some forbidden fish.
The State said no because if a flood wipes out my house at 6500 feet they could wash through the desert for 35 miles and destroy the known universe through some evil fish plot......
Goldfish are pretty easy so I might just stick with them.

Tilapia & Cichlid whats the difference? Our Walmart has Cichlid's in the pet department.

Yeah, it boils down to cost.  There is a place in NY that sells Channel catfish but it's ? 7 hours away or something like that.  There are natural Channel catfish in a river about 2 hours from me but it would be a big endeavor to go catch them since I've never caught them in the wild and it would be a lot of effort without it being a sure thing to catch them.  

130 miles is not a bad road trip and if you can definitely get them there then I would try them.  You can get battery-powered bubblers for the trip.  If the catfish are on the small size, 2 to 3", you could get a whole bunch of them.  They grow extremely fast!  Goldfish, though, seem like the gold standard for experimentation.

I ended up getting the Channel catfish through my local pet store.  They were very expensive ($6 each!) but when you factor in the hassle of trying to catch it myself, it was worth it.

I also have local Brown Bullhead catfish.  They grow to about 1 1/2 to 2 pounds and are very hardy.  I renewed my $20 a year aquaculture permit with the state so I have permission to harvest any wild catfish and transport them to my system.

It's too bad your state won't sell some to you directly.  I would check the pet store route.  They are sometimes called "Blue Channel Catfish" but I think they are Channel catfish and not a Blue Catfish and Channel Catfish hybrid since the juveniles have the spots.

Tilapia is the generic name for many species of Cichlids.  I'm sure delicious_bass can tell you more since he raises them.  They're extremely popular with people who keep aquariums and they could maybe order a specific type at your pet store that are used in aquaponics.  Very exciting considering where you live.

Does it freeze in the winter where you are?

We can walk across the pond in the worst of winter here.
Thats why I built a 20x100 sun room / green house onto the BOL
Our worst winter so far -17 outside meant 35 inside for an hour before the sun came up. Then it was 72 by 9am
Most winters average 45 night early morning and 70 during the day. With out any supplement heat.
The fish tank has supplement heat just in case but it takes awhile for 200 gal to cool down.
Tomatoes do fair in the winter depending on if i remember to close the vent at night
But my Norfolk pine is growing 2 feet a year and i take that as a good sign.

How big is the pond and is it stocked?  My dream is to own a property with a pond and grow Channel catfish in it.

not to big 20x15 x5 deep it was going to be bigger but I solid rock. Full of gold fish survivors from aquponics that wear sick and I feed them to my ducks now there are at least a 100 up to 6 inches long now.
" />
Making it bigger.
" />

Are those your own personal mule deer?  Seriously, do the deer come for the water or is it a natural through-way/trail for them?

Since it doesn't freeze to the bottom, it would be great for some Channel catfish.  The only issue is the ammonia/nitrate levels will be high if you have ducks pooping in it.  It may be better to simply keep it for the ducks rather than try to maximize it for catfish.  Or you could put maybe 6 catfish in there and get them to a good size.  Tilapia would not likely survive since it gets below 50 F and they really need warmer water to survive the winter.

No those belong to the king.
But we have Elk, sheep, dear, bear, etc. coming in to drink.
My long term goal is game fencing and my own exotics......
FBHO

</a>" />
I have wondered about doing a grow bed using the pond for a summer only thing. Anyone ever try it?

Where does the water come from (spring run-off?) and how much loss is there during the summer?

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When it rains it fills when there's no rain I add maybe 250 gal a day. Not to sure I have 7000 gal in tanks stored and I let it trickle out to keep it fresh. I have a spring about 300 ft and 12 ft higher that I plan to run a line to and I hope it will do the job.

Very nice pictures!   Must be nice to live on property like that.   I don't know anyone using a pond to feed a grow bed.   The dissolved nutrient content may not be sufficient for the plants since the pond is pretty big.   I'd try it if I had a pond.

The Lord has blessed us.
Its nice it is our BOL that will become our retirement "ranch" some day.
Now if my boys had moved back after college it would even be nicer. Told wife we have to adopt or start over again.

" />
Strawberry experiment.

" />
Found algae, duckweed. and bugs in the grow bed so I am flooding it and releasing a bunch of the smaller fish to see if they will clean it up for me.

Does the spring run spring/summer/fall?  If you could run the water from the spring into the pond and have the outflow from the pond run out, you are essentially flushing the pond slowly with clean water.  Any ammonia present from the ducks or fish would wash out.  In that case, your fish-stocking density could be very high.  

I have an acquaintance with something similar.  He has a pond that is maybe 4 times the size of yours.  A trout stream runs above and about 15 feet away from it.  When the stream is running high in the spring, water will flow through a 4" PVC pipe into his pond.  If he were to lower the PVC tube so it would be near the bottom of the stream bed, then he would have 3 season water flow into his pond except when the water in the pipe would likely freeze in the winter.  The stream also has a downward flow and the outflow of the pond meets up again with the stream.  It would be the perfect set-up for raising an almost limitless supply of fish.  

"Natural pools" essentially use this concept.  You pump water uphill and let it flow back through rocks and plants.  They sometimes have UV sterilizers.  In fact, I'm going to add a UV sterilizer to my system so I don't have to worry about a bacterial bloom like I got last summer.  It was completely harmless to the fish, but it clouded up the water so badly for a few weeks that I couldn't see to the bottom of the 550 gallon fish tank.

What is that retaining wall built out of?

I don't know but I'm sure it's easy to find out.  You could do concrete I suppose.  

As I'm sure you've found out with your system, raising fish is considerably more complex than raining animals or fowl.

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Shit goldfish are easy birds are hard. A ring tail broke into my coop tonight and ate all my turkey eggs then killed a guinea hen!