farminggreen: Presuming your use of the term "aquaculture" means growing fish for the table, unless you live in an area that never drops below freezing, I would have grave reservations about using aquarium heaters to raise water temps high enough to radiate sufficient heat to serve as space heaters, without heating the water to a degree that would kill the fish. Also, aquarium heaters are not really made to raise water temps much over 10 - 12 degrees above ambient air and why every Discus breeder I know has to use multiple heaters in their larger tanks, or risk having their 90 deg. loving fish keel over in winter, even with room temps in the 70s. I suppose it could be done, but you could end up spending far more on the heaters and electricity to run them than if you simply installed a space heater in your GH. So it's really a case of your expected air temps and the volume of warm but not hot enough to kill the fish water necessary to radiate enough heat to warm your GH. However, also keep in mind that regardless if baseboard, old fashoned cast iron stand ups, or underfloor- radiant heat circulates hot water or oil in a closed system. Fish need as much open surface as possible, which also accelerates both evaporation and heat loss. The cooler the ambient air in relation to the tank, the faster it will evaporate and require topping off, and the more wattage to maintain the optimum temp. for the health of the fish.

The only problem I've seen with trees in raised beds/fluffy soil is the wind knocking them over, but inside a greenhouse that won't be an issue. One of the biggest problems with greenhouses is that over time they build up a healthy population of pests and diseases - which is why greenhouse owners tend to spray a lot of chemicals. An easy way around this (in my experience) is to open the greenhouse up during the warm parts of the year and let mother nature deal with it. Closed up glass houses don't allow for this as well as plastic coated hoophouses with roll up doors and side panels. If you want to grow tropical fruit trees you don't need to keep the greenhouse super hot and humid in zone 8b, plenty of them thrive with winter temps close to freezing. The biggest problem I've had is that citrus and guava trees like new soil almost every year - that's a lot easier to do with container growing as opposed to in-the-ground planting. I would think that in your zone, summer cooling will be a bigger problem than winter heating. Most of my trees suffer when the temps get over 100, which can happen on a 75 degree day without major ventilation.

I'm getting "the picture". Thank you for putting up with my pedestrian - and occasionally redundant - questions. I'll check, but I really don't think I can find worms locally other than "fishin' worms" (very large night-crawlers) at Walmart, and that wouldn't be "cheap" even if they were the 'right' worms. "On the floor" is doable for increased heat as it will transfer directly to the bins. "In the sun" is actually doable. I just built a couple of "planters" that may be almost perfect outdoor worm bins, at least for this neck o' the woods. The back (north) wall of these planters is the south-facing wall of my shop. They are about 2' deep by 2' wide by 8' long. They are stone-walled (landscaping blocks), and "harvesting" could be a pain if I don't come up with an innovation of some sort, but not only would they get the most sun regardless of season, they would also get some heat from the shop in the winter. I just raise fish for fun. You can go here www.biopar.com to see what I "do". I will post separately about the zooplankton 'farm'. Here I can extract a little 'revenge'. :) "Just" go out to any local lake or pond, grab some submergent vegetation, (Elodea sp. Vallisneria sp. or whatever you have other than "scum" and benthic algae), throw it in a 10 gal tank, ($9 locally in AK), bubbling gently is usually better than no aeration, and "stand by". "If you build it" they will grow. If you want to supercharge your zooplankton farm, buy two or three FEEDER goldfish (usually 10 cents each), and another 5 or 10 gal tank. Put the goldfish in that tank and inoculate WITH LAKE WATER. (It has the "proper" phytoplankton for your area.) Put tank in direct sun if you can without parboiling the goldfish. Indirect sun is very nearly as good. Just don't let them get too hot - over 80 degree F water temp. (Goldfish are actually a cold-water fish.) In 5 to 7 DAYS the water in the goldfish tank will be "pea soup". Goldfish are very high nitrogen producers which is usually the nutrient most needed by phytoplankton. Feed this soup to the zopes growing in the other tank. DO NOT put goldfish in zope tank or soon no zopes. DO NOT TURN THE GOLDFISH LOOSE WHEN YOU ARE FINISHED WITH THEM! Give them away, or flush them down the toilet or, if you want to "euthanize" them as humanely as possible, put them in water in a ziplock bag and put them in the freezer. They will go to "sleep" and freeze. Or you could actually eat them yourself. Other than feeding fish, I don't know why one would want to 'farm' zooplankton, but I'm sure someone will have a novel idea. I suppose they could be added to a worm bin for some form of nutrient, but I don't know off of the top of my head what that would be. Bear-proof - not an issue one way or the other, :) but I haven't seen any bears around my place for several years. "I would try stocking about 1/2 -1 lb of worms per sq' ". That translates to 1.5 to 3 pounds per 24"x18" indoor bin, and 16 to 32 pounds in a 4'x8' outdoor bin. Based on the cheapest prices I have been seeing on EBay, that would be $550 to $1100 for four indoor bins and two 2'x2'x8' outdoor bins. Yikes! I can buy a lot of fish food and bagged soil for that kind of cash. In-floor (radiant panel) heating is indeed "good". Couple it with a ground-coupled heat exchange system (I do not have one, but I have a friend that does), and you move much closer to 'off the grid'. As for keeping fish 'warm' when the power goes out: I built my house of what are called "SIPS" or structural insulated panels. http://www.premiersips.com/ The walls are 8" thick (R-32) and the roof is 10" thick (R-40). A few years back, we had a 102-hour period where the wind-speed did not drop BELOW 90 mph. ("Hurricane" is 70 MPH.) Gusts - frequent gusts - to 120 mph. I'm sure "you" didn't even hear about it, and yet it was like having a category 2 hurricane on-site FOR FOUR DAYS. While the ambient temperature was only about 0 to 10 degrees F, the wind-chill was colder than -60 degrees F for that full 102 hours. (By the way, wind-chill effects ANYTHING - living or not - that generates heat; a car, a person, or a house, etc.) The power went out shortly BEFORE the 102-hour interval I mentioned. When the power came back on at the end of that interval, I was just about to go out and get "auxiliary" heat because the temperature in the house was down to 45 degrees F, and the house is about 3000 sf. (As a result of that event, I now have an auxiliary generator that my house "plugs into".) All of which was/is irrelevant with respect to the fish, as they are native North American fish, not "tropical", and can handle most temperature fluctuations in my house. Over heating is actually a bigger issue than too cold. Actually, because I couldn't keep the house COOLER than about 80, I just last week turned my heating system to "stand-by". We're down to about 70 now. Your collective enthusiasm is heartening. I am much more enthused and optimistic about "worming" than I was when I started this thread. Thanks, Paul

Would we tell someone that loved painting to give it up because we thought they had no talent? Some of you might, but you really shouldn't. Personal happiness and freedom have more value than some of you realize. It's their life let them have it. In words sung by Whitney Houston in her song, The Greatest Love of All. "Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be." "If I fail, if I succeed, at least I lived as I believed". I look forward to failure on my road of happiness and I wish happiness for you all.