Hydroponics/Aquaponics thread.

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Zamial

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Please note: This thread is NOT to discuss growing illegal plants or the like. This is a thread to discuss growing fruits, vegetables and in the case of aquaponics fish. If you have a system that does grow illegal substances please keep it to yourself.


Background on my system:
My late FIL had built a DIY hydroponic garden. He had no temp control but did harvest some veggies from it. We inherited the system as my wife loves gardening and wanted to to try to get this to work. She has spent countless hours pouring over the internet/reading books educating herself.
I have secretly been wanting to get into aquaponics and have been slowly pushing her in that direction. The reason I wanted to get into aqua over hydro is it is more natural and uses no chemicals as well as produces fish meat and is MUCH cheaper.

The garden is made from white PVC fence posts and has the ability to hold a total of 30 plants. We have catnip, basil, 3 different types of tomatoes, okra, pattypan squash, bell peppers, peas, green beans, strawberries and various leaf lettuces that are pretty much ready to go into the garden or being germinated now. We have a heavy duty pond pump, air pump and a huge air stone. The "tank" is a mostly buried 30 gallon food grade drum.

We have sourced the Tilapia fish locally :ban: (a huge savings picking them up vs. shipping them) and are now looking at heaters. I suspect we will have the fish in place before weeks end.

Yes, I will snap some pics and post them up tomorrow.

So does anyone else do/have done this with success?
 
A fresh fish garden?!?!?!?! That sounds incredible!

Aquaponics in a nutshell works like this: Feed fish in tank, Fish make poo and ammonia, bacteria convert amonia into nitrogen. Pump nitrogen rich water over plant roots, plants remove nitrogen and clean the water, water is returned to the tank.

You can use any fish but Talapia are the way of the walk. I will have 15-20 fish in my tank and may be able to add more than that. They will grow to the size of a large crappie or small bass plus they taste good.

Long term I will eventually build a 4 season green house that has a pool (large tank) for massive talapia production. I will also grow duckweed to provide shade and cover for the fish. Talapia go from fry to breading size in 6-8 weeks so the population will adjust itself according to available size/room. The duck weed has more protein than soy and can be eaten by the fish and other animals. But why stop at just fish? I will build a chicken coop against the north wall of my greenhouse and add a "run" over the tank. The chicken droppings will be eaten by the duckweed and provide a more complex nutrient rich water. I also found out that pheasants eat nearly the same thing as chickens so there will be a 2nd run over the tank. Pest control will be lady bugs and preying mantis. (manti?)

This will mean that I will have the ability to grow an exponential amount of: fruits, vegetables, eggs, fish and poultry. I estimate I will be able to generate 98% of all my needed food on my property. NOTE: not all plants grow well in a hydro/aqua setting. But that is pretty easily solved by using a good old fashioned dirt garden.

To clean the pond of fish waste I will collect the droppings that are left over and use them in an earthworm/nightcrawler compost bin. The chickens can also eat vegy scraps and anything left after that goes to the worms. I bet you are smart enough to guess that the fish love worms and the compost will be better than any miracle grow for the fore mentioned dirt garden.

It floors me that this is not being done everywhere.

If I have my way I will also be raising angora rabbits (my lawn care specialists) and bees but those are much longer term goals.

If everything works out I will be having a 100% grown by me and the wife meal this fall.
 
How much energy cost does it take to supply circulation and heating/cooling for this system?

Heating will be the same as it would be for a 55 gallon tropical fish tank and is highly dependent on the ambient air temps. The same for the air pump and pond pump. I do not imagine it will cause a significant increase to my energy bill.

Many people have set up small solar systems and a battery bank to reduce this cost even further.
 
I have seen some pretty good sales on good sized solar panels last 2 years. I think it would be a good way to reduce the cost and increase the DIY factor. I've been thinking about buying a panel to play with but don't have any good projects to use it for. Homebrewing has kind of taken over my spare time.
 
Pretty sure there was a thread about this in teh DIY or hops growing section a couple year ago. Dude had a pretty elaborate set-up and, IIRC, was complaining mostly about the fish.
 
Thanks! I read all of WM's thread and can see a few of the issues that he figured out on his own. I feel if he would have been using tilapia fish he would have had better results. Gold fish are FILTHY creatures and a few will power out enough waste to power a garden 2-3 times his size. The other 2 issues were water temps that were to high for gold fish and left over fish food, probably using store bought that was chemical/processed.

I have been in contact with an aquaponic farm. He claims the tilapia prefer 80-85F water but can only drop into the mid 50's before they start dying. Feed the fish floating all natural homemade food and anything left after 15 minutes gets removed. My system is a little different than his but the same concept.

Pics:

Overall
DSCF2475.jpg


Mostly buried 35 gallon food grade barrel
DSCF2476.jpg


different shot
DSCF2477.jpg


Trellis front
DSCF2482.jpg


Trellis side:
DSCF2481.jpg
(The camera angle makes the garden appear to be really unlevel. I assure you it running slightly down hill but is mostly level.)

Fence post garden
DSCF2480.jpg


reservoir (not only is there a constant flow there are 2 mini jets that cross (insert joke about crossing the streams here.)
DSCF2479.jpg



Well that is it in a nut shell the power cord and air pump are inside the garage and out of site. I cut a hole and forced a 2 gallon bucket into it that has the bottom removed. This allows me to feed the fish and install the pump.
 
Tilapia are pretty easy to keep at warm temperatures and high densities. They'll tolerate quite a bit of saline as well. Start off by underfeeding, as overfeeding will cause problems with both the fish and your water.

I'd recommend some sort of secondary bio-filter that's on standby should you need to clean the water pretty quickly. That will be easier than a complete water change.

Good luck.
 
I've been reading about aquaponics for a couple years now. Someday, I hope to get a system going.

I have two thoughts right now for additions to a working system:

BSF: I started raising black soldier flies last year. It's a relatively simple system to build. Put in organic waste, the output is rich soil (roughly 5-10 % of original weight of trash), a compost tea (fertilizer for non-food plants), and larvae of the black soldier fly. Larvae exit the system on their own, and the output can be directed to the pond, to become instant live food for the fish. I love this-put in trash and you get soil, fertilizer, and food for animals.

yeast and spent grain: I've been researching if there is any benefit to using spent grain and yeast as a feed. I know these can be mixed together and dried for a feed for chickens. These may also be a nice source of protein for fish, and has been proven in the case of Tilapia to increase the size. I think spent grains would need to be finely ground and dried, then mixed with a yeast cake. A little more research would be required to estimate the percentage of protein and other nutrients, and this would be different depending on any one person's system. If you did indeed build this inside a greenhouse, then your already on the way to having a natural way to dry things, too.

I'm excited to see this thread and am sure the DIY culture of homebrewers can contribute quite a bit. Thanks to the OP for starting it.
 
Unfortunately for us our money ran out for the project and we ran into temp control issues being outdoors. After speaking with an aquaponics farm near us it turns out that talipia thrive in warmer water and we would have had massive issues with temp control. I have not abandoned the idea but we are currently renting so building a permanent structure is out. We are planning on moving to our own home and the 1st thing on the build list is a full size, 4 season, aquaponics green house.
 
Greenhouse would help. Vinyl-covered is actually reasonable, I think. Vents for summertime... Good for you, a man with a plan.

Do you have a brew room planned?
 
Do you have a brew room planned?

Yes, I get the entire basement. All of it. She can do whatever she wants with the rest of the house but the basement is all mine and yes it will be my brew area, bar and man cave. I have even begun collecting things to start making sour beers at the new place. There will be no laundry in the basement either as I sold her on "Honey wouldn't it be nice to have same floor laundry?" and she agreed. :D

As for the greenhouse I will have to custom build it because it is going to be quite a bit more than a standard greenhouse. Living in Wisconsin I will need to insulate the north wall as it will get no sun ever. This affords me the opportunity to turn that into a chicken and pheasant coop (2 separate coops side by side). At that point I should end up with an inclosed system that provides some herbs, fruits, veggies, eggs, fish and pheasant meat on a continuous cycle. We will also have seasonal gardens for what does not grow in the greenhouse. Time will tell but we are VERY serious about this and will get this done.
 
You say, "we". I like that. My projects are all one-man. My wife's assistance with beer only involves the glass...
 
My wife had done this same thing but she was living in a temperate zone. I am thinking that it would not work so well where I live just because it would get to cold in the winter. I suspect the cost of the grow lights and heating the water would offset any benefit you would gain.

Sucks though because it looks like a cool thing to do
 
Hey guys, going to try and bring this thread back to life. Has anyone else jumped into the aquaponic gardening world yet? I am looking and thinking of building or buying a system (www.otisontop.com). I do not have any green thumb by any stretch of the imagination, so if the price is right on having it build and completely set-up I am going to bite.

I am curious to know what anyone has grown. I am in Florida and we pretty much have all year round growing weather.
 
My brother is very in to aquaponics and had a great set up last winter. He was actually using Rainbow Trout for his fish because he wasn't able to source Tilapia at the time. He shuts down the aqua garden in the summer and goes conventional and then when temps drop he starts back up. I plan to start one soon using his set up as the basis of my design.
 
Joker - I am assuming he does aquaponics inside, due to the weather in Oregon, correct? I'm looking to do it all round on my covered patio. Saw people use crayfish as a nitrogen source for the plants, thought that was pretty awesome! I don't really eat to many freshwater fish, so whatever I got I would just give away as they reporduced.
 
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