The Big Move to Arizona

After some hard thinking and imagining, and the yearly recurrence of tornado warnings in the area that I lived we decided to move, at first we were going to move to North east Ohio but this turned out to be a bad Idea so our second choice was Prescott Valley, Arizona. Why Arizona you might ask? well for one there are very very few tornadoes in Arizona. 

Prescott Valley (locally known as, PV) is located in central Arizona approximately 85 miles north of Phoenix at 5,100 feet  elevation On average, there are 275+ sunny days per year in Prescott Valley The July high is around 89 degrees. PV has everything you need - close to home...all the stores, good restaurants, top of the line medical facilities, 5 lakes, a large theater complex, bowling alley, as well as a wonderful climate, mild winters, beautiful scenery, and close to historic Prescott, only a hour and a half from Phoenix if you want the desert, or Flagstaff if you want to ski, and the Grand Canyon and Lake Powell for outdoor adventuring. 

It's also closer to my aging parents and I thought the the kids would enjoy spending time with their grandparents, we now live a few miles from them and see them often. another great thing about PV is the potential for solar and wind energy with and average 275 days of sunshine solar is the way to go. Where as Jewell, Kansas had on average 200 days of sunshine and a lot more windy and rainy days that PV.

Over all my family is adjusting to the higher altitude and dryer and warmer climate, my daughters seem to love it here as there is more and closer shopping, we used to have to drive 85 miles to get the closest mall now it's a 15 min drive up the hill, with so much to do here I think the kids will acclimate rather quickly. It gets hot during the day but it always cools off at night which is what I like most about the mile high desert and the scenery is killer, waking up to a wheat or milo field in my back yard used to be mildly interesting but now when I step outside I can see mountains in almost every direction it makes me want to go explore them

I am building my aquaponics systems in my garage now so I have a bunch more space than I used to have, The 3 x 3 ft system is up and running the fish actually made the trip from Kansas to Arizona with minimal casualty's. I only lost 3 fish out of 20 transporting them in a 20 gallon tote with an aerator for oxygen and food every 4th day I did 3 water changes over the course of a month and a half before I got them back into the system tank. 

Sadly I lost Dorothy my big fantail goldfish that was a sad day she was huge almost as big as my out stretched hand but couldn't take the stress of moving she was so big she clogged the toilet when we sent her to the fishy grave in the plumbing of the hotel we were staying at, we lost a Koi and a smaller Comet Goldfish but the other Koi and Goldfish made the trip just fine, goldfish are hardy little buggers I know the temperature differences in a 20 gallon tote must be drastic and changes in altitude probably don't help either but they survived and I don't need to replace many fish.


I will be working on a bigger IBC based System with a simple timer and indexing valve and no sump, I will also be raising Tilapia in the bigger system so watch for the build out of this next system soon. it should look similar to this system here