Been gone from the blog for a while now, I have been studying and practicing aquaponics, Whats that you say well, Aquaponics is a type of soil-less gardening method where one cultivates fish and plants together in a re-circulating ecosystem. It utilizes natural occurring bacteria to convert organic fish wastes into plant nutrients, it's all very sustainable as you use about 90% less water with aquaponics as you do with conventional gardening. since the water stays in a closed loop and cycles through the plant beds.
It starts
I built my first system out of a 10 gallon aquarium and a rubber maid food storage bin and some 1/2 inch PVC, that and a old fountain pump I had laying around and I was in business. here's what that first system looked like.
This system was great for growing tons of basil for cooking but was limited in size and production capabilities, But the Fish were extremely happy with their clean water the media filter (grow bed) worked so well that I stopped using the filter that come with the aquarium and eventually threw it out.
Bigger and More!
Well a natural progression to a larger system was in order after seeing how well a small system could produce loads of fresh basil for my home cooking, I thought why not an entire herb garden with Sage,Thyme, Rosemary, Oregano, Dill and of course Lots of Basil. Then I thought why not more? Peppers (Hot ones!) and Strawberry's, the more I thought about it and drew designs on scraps of paper, and amid discussions with my wife and the mass of seed catalogs that started magically arriving in my mail (from late night web research sessions) I designed a system based on the many designs floating around the web, and after watching video after video on you tube, I finally got together some resources and procured some IBC totes to build a system in my basement a larger more robust system. So the goal was to go from a few Intermediate Bulk Containers also known as IBC totes.
However starting small with a 10 gallon aquarium was simple and building a system of this caliber would take some knowledge and experience I just didn't have so setting aside the IBC totes that I had acquired I set out to design and intermediate system that I could manage for a while to see how the dynamics of a larger system work. So back to the drawing board I went.
Smaller but still robust
I decided on a 3 foot by 3 foot system that would take up minimal space and still provide about 9 square feet of grow bed, I started by finding a bigger aquarium, 55 gallons and 3 feet wide. My wife found the perfect aquarium not long after I started looking on Facebook and we took a short trip to look at it, 50 bucks later and it was mine!
but now where was I going to get a 3 foot by 3 foot grow bed for this thing? and how was I going to construct it all? I am into sustainability and recycling is a great way to reduce and reuse, so I talked to a friend who reclaims pallets and machinery crates, so I took some time and found the right wood and boards I needed and build a 3 foot square frame with a pallet for the bottom then My friend Vlad offered me a perfect grow bed at a really decent price, Vlad and his friend and partner Jeff run a store in Salina, KS called Atria Aqua Gardens, if your at all interested in this stuff or other methods of soil less gardening Vlad is the go to guy!
so after some careful acquisition of parts I built this system you see below
It has a timer based pump system which turns on the pump for 15 mins every hour or 15 on and 45 off. this cycles all the water in the fish tank through the grow bed once an hour. the plants seem to love it in there, I also build a custom light fixture to hold 4 200 watt florescent grow bulbs. each bulb is actually only 42 watts but puts out the lumens of a 200 watt light.
I also have about 200-300 red worms living in my aquaponics system, Composting worms are specialized surface dwellers (not burrowers), typically living in very rich organic matter such as manure (fish poo), compost heaps or leaf litter. I bought these online and started a Vermiculture compost bin to breed the worms, after about a week they converted approximately 8 lbs of kitchen scraps, veggies, egg shells , coffee grounds and shredded newspaper into some killer humus for my summer (outdoor) garden.
The most common variety used is Eisenia fetida (also spelled ‘foetida‘), Common names for E. fetida include: red worm, red wiggler, manure worm, and tiger worm. The end result is that I am raising worms which when put into the grow beds of my aquaponics system proceed to eat the fish solid waste and convert it to a rich minerals and essential nutrients soup that makes the plants even happier! the worms are happy the plants are happy and the fish are happy, and occasionally a worm finds it;s way into the drain and the fish get an extra protein snack! Red worms love (and can tolerate) very high levels of moisture content (80-90%), but they also require oxygen so it’s important to find the right balance, with a timer based system of 15 mins on and 45 mins off the worms are living in a paradise or as I call it worm Valhalla.
What about the Fish?
I have about 20 fish in the system and I am still tweaking the feeding routine to regulate the amount of ammonia that gets put into the system from the fish waste (poop). The bacteria that live in my system convert ammonia into nitrites and then another type of bacteria, converts the nitrites into Nitrates that the plants then use as food and clean the water before returning to the fish who are happy to eat at regular intervals and produce a steady supply of ammonia and start the cycle over again and since this is technically still a hobby system and I wanted to fine tune the plant growth aspects of the system I haven't focused much on the fish that is to say I am not raising goldfish to consume them they are more like pets.
But in the near future I am going to put the schooling and books and Udemy classes to the test and build out a multi-grow bed system with some raft tables to boot, and then I am going to raise Tilapia.
Tilapia is a tropical fish native to the Middle East, it has been said that Tilapia was the fish used by Jesus regarding the miracle of feeding the masses. Tilapia farming offers a solution to the ever-more-difficult problem of finding a fish at the store that is fresh, clean, affordable, and virtually organic..
Tilapia are very clever fish, the females realized a long time ago that if they kept their fertilized eggs in their mouths, their survival rate in the wild would be greatly enhanced. Thus, they are known today as "mouth brooders". They keep their eggs in their mouths until they hatch, and take them back into their mouths any time danger arises for a few days after they hatch. After that it's "adios," In the wild, their survival rate is about 1%. The average "litter" is about 100 to 3000 "fry" (babies) depending on the age of the female.
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