aquaponics triponics invention

Discussion in 'Planting, growing, nurturing Plants' started by baleboy, Sep 1, 2005.

  1. earthbound

    earthbound Junior Member

    Joined:
    Apr 25, 2005
    Messages:
    603
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Oh yeah, some of those emoticons ... I really don't know about that first one on the list of emoticons you'll never use... :shock: The fifth one I thought was someone reading a book, but now you mention it, I see that it could be something totally different..... :lol:

    I started trying to draw 'it' up last night using a program I downloaded for drawing flow diagrams. It ended up looking like a spaghetti mess and I gave up 2/3 of the way through..
     
  2. baleboy

    baleboy Junior Member

    Joined:
    Aug 30, 2005
    Messages:
    50
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    my dear christopher

    i amvery impressed my friend i was wondering if all of this was going to b a flurry of words and no plan to make it happen

    i am seriously coming to visit if you can getr this to work

    i have needed an excuse to go travalling for a while now

    i think the initial plan sounds great and no dont think you need the 12 step
    program they are for people going down, being destructive, you on the other hand are making the world a better place and all it has cost you so far is a little sleep

    keep up your enthusiasm chris it is inspiring

    i can think of a few things to add:

    i do know that not all worms are good to feed fish . one amazing thing about some worms is the amazing ability to produce a yukky enzyme that birds fish and other predators dont like similar to the smell that centipede give off i guess?

    so you have to pick the right worms earthworms and blues are the best
    red and tigerworms (the most common in composting systems are (no good for fish) for more info buy organic growing with worms by david murphy thru penguin/viking pub.

    BUT , and this is a very exciting aside , THERE IS A GUY IN NEW ZEALAND WHO HAS A WAY OF ANNOYING WORMS TO GET THEM TO PRODUCE THIS ENZYME THEN HE WASHES THIS STUFF OFF THE WORMS BOTTLES IT AND SPRAYES IT ON HIS PLANTS WHICH KEEPS PESTS AWAY *&^%$# AMAZING WHAT PEOPLE DO

    sorry i get a bit excited at times the guys is called coby thompson and he makes 'vermirepel' you can contact him on '[email protected]

    sorry to get distracted

    i still wonder weather it is better to grow veggies i the ground where they are spose to be (chris you could still grow them in raised beds above the wetness ) i just wonder weather there are things veggies need in soil that they cant get in gravel (to keep their immunity up and for our health too) also i see a problem trying to keep the filtration constant in the gravel beds as you come to the end of summer or whatever crop you have just planted, if the tomatoes die how do you keep the water filter gowing

    DONT WORRY :-x it WILL still work
    i just think it is best to keep the system as natural as possible let things do what they were made to do im not bagging any ideas here! just mulling over the additions making things better. we have only been talking for a week it will just take a bit of time for the best ideas to fit

    so this is what i am thinking, keep veggies in soil where they are supposed to be (also i must say that encouraging good soil is so vital for our planet as a whole it locks up carbon and other things we want out of our atmospere etc)

    in stead of growbeds you pump water in to another tank that is growing spirulina water hyascinth canna lillies (beautiful flowers you can sell also great at taking nutrient out of water (use in many composting toilet systems then they can safetly be composted )

    or water ribbons and bull rushes both of which are australian natives and delishious taste like water chestnut and asparagus respectivly these constantly grow and keep water clear

    this way you have removed the problem of filtration 'down times'
    chris i realise this soil thing may be a problem because of extreme weather couldnt you just mound up some crappy earth then put soil on top ??

    then you have worms living in yor soil and you feed them in trenches between the veggies with manure food scraps etc

    i have a friend who has an ornimental fisk tank where he is experimenting with just having the right amount of plants to the right amount of fish and he doesnt have to move the water anywhere he just feeds the fish

    it is amazing you can actually see the bubbles of oxegen on the leaves of the plants

    admittedly he does use flurolights to keep the plants photosynthesizing

    i think the fih would be happier too with places to hide would they not

    if you could get and all in one system this would remove the pump and the exta tanks and all the piping and all you would have to worry about was the fish food which we have covered by other things in the system

    you still get productivity from the nutrient rich water with your edible water plants (could you grow rice ??any rain water could run into the tank in one end and the over flow at the other could run to the veggies, fruit trees, spirulina and water for animals

    i know i am throwing a spanner in the works here but if we dont air all the ideas we may end up going a long time down a road and realise there is a much easier way

    especially as most permies want to do things simply and cheaply

    does any one else have any constructive critisism ???

    i dont mean to dampen enthusiasm just want a *&^%$ masterpice!!!

    talk soon brothers and sisters

    marcus
     
  3. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

    Joined:
    Jul 9, 2005
    Messages:
    1,536
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    38
    Hello Baleboy Marcus, Earthbound Joel, Penny, Murray and Everyone else,

    "twas the night befor town trip, and all through the house, twas heard the clatter of keyboar and click of the mouse...."

    I have to go to town in the AM, (which, techincally starts in 17 minutes).

    We grow lots of veggies in the ground already, and I am very interested in an organic fish based hydroponics set up, like the aquaponics system ( :wav: ) . A big part of the problem here is our wet is torrential, which beats veggies flat, molds their roots, causes bacterial wilt, etc, and aquaponics :wav: ( we hear the sound of feverishly clicking keys on the keyboard...."get back in your room before Murray punishes me for overworking you guys! Down emoticons, heel....") is incredibly attractive in its over all system efficiency. The various other components would make it more involved, a larger web of nutrient cycling with more production leaving the system at various places....

    I like the spirulina/water hyacinth/canna idea, but working that into the larger aquaponics system :wav: would be the way for me to do it, I think, though I would be willing to experiment some time after I get the aquaponics system :wav: up and running.

    We could make raised beds, in fact my wife Dawn does, and terraces, but between the rain and nematodes, which reduce the species we can grow (never had luck with aggplant, for exaple) and the rainy season, which makes annual (tomato, cabbage, cuckes, etc) veggie production difficult, eliminating soil altogether has an advantage that I would like to try. And a big part of me is attracted to the sheer brilliance of a semi closed loop system, which, if we open up the system to other farm activities, ie. our "decaponics" idea, then the loop becomes closed, a web of supporting activities with multiple yields, not all caloric, but self sustaining from farm activities.

    Went to sleep, woke up, writing this in AM:

    As far as carbon sequestering, we have 70 acres of land, with 7 acres under agroforestry, about a half acre in terraces under perrenial veggie production, an alluvial flood plain of a quarter acre for veggie production in the dry season, an ace or so in transition from shifting annual cultivation (corn, beans and squash) into stacked polycultural agroforestry system, and the balance under bush, managed for habitat and limited timber extraction, so I am interested in pursuing aquaponics :wav: as an alternative model since we are doing so much soil based activities.

    I see what you are saying, and for sure those are valid and interesting ideas, worthy of being pursued further, but I really want to try the aquaponics system :wav: first before I try soil based variations, in large part because I like the concept of systems, and the straigh aquaponics system is fantastic. (Good emoticons, stay in your box...)

    Being able to add components to increase outputs, outputs like protein from fish, protein from rabbits, goat protein with milk and meat, yabbie protein, manures, veggies from the hydroponics component, methane from the digestor, protein from the spirulina component, worm castings, etc, while increasing capability for internal nutient cycling is, well, wow, exciting, and is part of why I don't want to go too far from the initial core idea based on the aquaponics system :wav: .

    Also, we are a not for profit demonstration farm, and the straight aquaponics system :wav: is an absoltely amazing system. Being able to complex it would:

    1 Increase our dietary diversity by allowing us to eat annual veggies during the off season.

    2 Give me something to hyper focus on :lol:

    3 increase our visibility, which for us as an organization whose goal is to convince farmers to diversify from more genetically smple farming (monocrops of export crops like citrus) and shifting cultivation, a high impact form of calorie production, is desirable. Having a good "draw" is a consideration. If people come to see the aquaponics system :wav: they will also see the other non external input farming we are doing here, and we can use that opportunity to show stacked polycultures at work, explaining the components and how each of the components work in relation to the other components

    Penny, thanks for the thoughts on yabbies and burrowing. Something to consider, and we will have to pick our yabbies carefully. I have no idea what species the ones in the river are, and a major idea we have had in our proposal was to use native species, so will have to consider that. Perhaps making a modified wetlands for the yabbies in particular, as a prefilter for the water, with the canna that Marcus suggested and logs and sticks to approximate a natural setting, would give them better habitat to increase their production and improve their quality of life.

    Penny, I was hoping Joel could come here to receive the award, (and to give me tips on things) but, sadly, he probably won't, so it goes off in the mail. However, we will have an official ribbon cutting ceremony some day, when we open up the aquaponics :wav: based system, with how many components we can squeeze in, so we could do it then!

    Give me an A, "A"
    Give me a Q, Q!
    Give me a U, "U"
    Give me an A, "A"
    Give me a P, "P"
    Give me an O, "O!"
    Give me another P, "P!"
    Give me another O, "O!"
    Give me an N, "N!"
    Give me an I, "I"
    Give me a C, "C!"
    Give me an S, "S!"

    WHATS THAT SPELL? "AQUAPONICS! :wav: !!!!!"
    WHATS THAT SPELL? "AQUAPONICS! :wav: !!!!!"
    WHATS THAT SPELL? "AQUAPONICS! :wav: !!!!!"
    WHATS THAT SPELL? "AQUAPONICS! :wav: !!!!!"
    I CAN'T HEAR YOU? "AQUAPONICS! :wav: !!!!!"
    WHATS THAT SPELL? "AQUAPONICS! :wav: !!!!!"
    THANK YOU! ( Sorry, but I always wanted to do that!)

    And, actually, it spells "aquapoponics"
     
  4. earthbound

    earthbound Junior Member

    Joined:
    Apr 25, 2005
    Messages:
    603
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    I guess the whole idea of aquaponics is that it's combining aquaculture and hydroponics. There are hundreds of variations one idea I really like is using dilute worm juice as a hydroponic solution, it works amazingly well with no nasty chemicals as you would use in normal hydroponics.

    Part of the idea of having the gravel grow beds is that you need lots of surface area for bacteria to grow on. The bacteria converts the fish waste, ammonia, into nitrites and then nitrates. This bacteria grows on all surfaces of your system and when you have gravel filled beds that adds up to lots of bacteria, and hence lots of fish which can be grown in a small area. As you modify the system and lower the amount of surface area, this means you can stock less fish.

    To solve the filtration between crops problem, you stagger the crops in the different grow beds so that you always have different growth stages in different beds, this way you always have plants extracting the nutrients...

    One of the main advantages of an aquaponics system is that it's useful for people in extreme climates. When the snow is a foot thick outside you can't really grow much. If you have a greenhouse with the thermal mass of fish tanks and gravel filled beds inside, you can grow your own food year round..

    Those of us lucky enough to have good growing seasons, well, theres nothing like the smell and taste of a freshly pulled carrot out of a rich composty garden bed...

    Penny, how do you harvest your marron?

    Joel
     
  5. Penny

    Penny Junior Member

    Joined:
    May 12, 2005
    Messages:
    93
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    harvesting Marron

    There are a coupleof ways of harvesting marron, nets/traps (dog bickies for bait.
    Wading in with a net and raiding the shelters (OK in summer but not winter) or as my ponds are set up with a harvesting system.
    The ponds are all connected via 100mm pipes which drain to the lowest sump dam.
    each pond has a vertical 100mm pipe with a shorter narrower pipe inside that allows excess water to run to the lower dam where it is pumped up to the other ponds at night for circulation.
    When I harvest the central pipe is replaced with one that has holes in it so the pond drains slowly o/night and the marron move towards the opening as the water lowers. The pipe is then removed and the100mm reducing fitting pulled off and the marron fish and everything else is washed down the 100mm pipe.
    At the sump dam I have a large basket arrangement that traps them. From there they are sorted and those to be marketed are placed in a large aerated purging tank for 24-36 hrs. Packed in foam boxes recycled from a large grocery chain with a couple of bottles of ice to keep them cool and calm.
    I wish I could draw it as it is so easy to describe in diagrams as I dont know if you can visualise the set up.
     
  6. earthbound

    earthbound Junior Member

    Joined:
    Apr 25, 2005
    Messages:
    603
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Hey Penny

    I know that your only out doing it part time, but have you found that the marron seem like a viable way of making some money?

    It's just that I have heard so many conflicting reports on marron growing. Most of the literature I have read says that if your not going to do the ponds and follow the techniques exactly as they recommend then it's probably not worth even bothering..

    Have you sold any yet? Do you have to sell them through a co-op?

    Marron are something I have always loved the idea of growing as part of a diverse range of products, I just couldn't see myself having the one hectare of ponds, all laser levelled, paddle wheels aerators, etc...

    Do you have aerators on your ponds?
     
  7. Penny

    Penny Junior Member

    Joined:
    May 12, 2005
    Messages:
    93
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    marron

    My ponds are aerated but with and aerator a bit like the aerator stone works in an aquarium, pipe air and a couple of 50c floats to hold one end up.Invented by a WA guy Brett and cost a few dollars comared to a $2000 for paddle wheels. Marron can be profitable, there is a co-op you can sell them to but we were selling ours direct to resturants. I had always considered that they would only be a small part of the whole system but there is huge potential for the marketing of them as less than 50 tonne /yr are produced. I havent gone into it properly yet but once I get the farm up and running i think they will provide a bit extra income. and I would like to incorporate the ponds into the whole system so with a bit of careful planning the system should feed them with little input from me. Well that is the idea.
     
  8. bjgnome

    bjgnome Junior Member

    Joined:
    May 27, 2005
    Messages:
    56
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Funny. I've also got the aquaponics bug. An old friend I'd lost touch with called me up tonight, and as it turns out his wife just got a job at an aquaponics outfit in the Amherst, Massachusetts area.

    https://www.bioshelters.com/

    Vexing.

    -Jonathan
     
  9. baldcat

    baldcat Junior Member

    Joined:
    Jul 29, 2005
    Messages:
    452
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    ok .. so... I have sore eyes now from reading this... Maybe someone could bind this thread and post it out in the mail for everyone to put in their bookshelf...

    Was just reading the first couple of posts... And I was thinking big.. But if you used carp as your fish, (ok you wouldn't eat them unless you were starving *note Aussie Murray river carp(European) but they make great fretiliser... So much so that some plants buy carp for processing for the commercial market...
     
  10. frosty

    frosty Junior Member

    Joined:
    Jul 5, 2005
    Messages:
    852
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Re: marron

    this sounds like exactly what we need for our big pond to allow us to use fish to keep the algae down

    can you please explain more about this and/or give me contact details of the guy who invented them ?

    frosty
     
  11. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

    Joined:
    Jul 9, 2005
    Messages:
    1,536
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    38
    Frosty,

    The aerators would do the job for you! I read, somewhere along time ago, about a messed up dairy farm that was bought and turned into a temperate permaculture paradise, and one of the problems they had was the algae in the ponds. They used aerators to get the job done... and truned the algae infested cattle poop controlling pond into a beautiful pond that they swam in.

    I will see if it is in my pile of magazines I can't throw away.

    Jonathon, what a cool site! How cool for your friend to work there.

    Penny, your pond scene sounds amazing! I am inspired to build our pond next year. Your description in words works very well. We will have to build a pond, and then we build the aquaponics system :wav: tied into the goat dairy, the worm farm, the chookery (new Australian word), the spirulina unit, the,.... etc....

    The more I look at aquaponics :wav: , the more I get excited about integrating it with ongoing nutrient cycling.

    Joel, you have an amazing and inspiring system. We live in an extreme climate, in a friendly humid tropical way, of course, but the system offer so much to us in terms of stretching out ability to produce leafy greens and manage fish.

    Baleboy Mercus, you have opened the floodgates of creativity with the Triponics idea. This is exciting....

    C

    PS, edited to add, someone said I have CDD (forum losing disorder, or something...), I can't find it, but I confess, I am guilty of going off on tangents... can't help it. This community of people, and all these ideas are exciting.

    Joel, one last thing. I have your award, and am going to town to mail it, but... if you can waint a few weeks until I go up to Belize City to pickup the official Maya Mountain Research Farm tee shirts, I can stick a teeshirt in with the award. Are you chomping at the bit to hang your award, or can you wait a few weeks so you can hang some advertisement for our fledgling project on your back?
     
  12. earthbound

    earthbound Junior Member

    Joined:
    Apr 25, 2005
    Messages:
    603
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    I can wait Christopher, I'm in no great hurry, and I'd love to be a walking billboard for the work you have going on.. I haven't sent yours yet as I've hardly left the house this week :cry: but it will be on its way first thing next week.

    I stumbled across the beginnings of your web site earlier in the week, damn that course sounds good, how did you manage to get those top names? I'm very impressed... Nice pics too mate.... :D

    Thanks heaps

    Joel.

    p.s. I have broad shoulders
     
  13. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

    Joined:
    Jul 9, 2005
    Messages:
    1,536
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    38
    Joel,

    Yeah, Dawn has been working on the website on and off for a while, but we have a volunteer here from Antioch College who is helping her. It will get better with more phtots and information.

    I wish I could say that my winning personality and the charm that oozes from my very pores convinced Toby and Penny to come here, but it really was my wife, Dawn ( I had enough charm to convince her to marry me, though!).

    Dawn read Toby Hemenways book, "Gaias Garden", and she liked it. Toby's writing is very warm. He writes as if he is talking to a close friend. Dawn decided she liked his writing, and thought she would like to have a Permaculture Design Course here, at our farm. Since we are a newer project, this would be a great way to put us on the map.

    Dawn wrote Toby, and Toby was very interested. We made a schedule and he asked Penny Livingston if she would like to do the course with him here. She agreed, and we have been preparing for it for the last few months.

    It is going to be a good course, and we are very excited. We have interest from Peace Corps right now, which would get us some warm bodies.

    I only wish we would have the time to put up and make work our aquaponics system :wav: . Perhaps it will be an annual event, and next time we can show off the aquaponics system :wav: .

    The website will begin to work, soon, but we have a whole bunch of things we need to do before we can focus on that.

    An XXL shirt with our groovy logo will be on its way, soon.

    Anticipate its arrival...

    Christopher
     
  14. baldcat

    baldcat Junior Member

    Joined:
    Jul 29, 2005
    Messages:
    452
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Mate I would love to list your website on my site .. If that's cool, what's the address ?

    https://sublife.worldpartypro.com
     
  15. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

    Joined:
    Jul 9, 2005
    Messages:
    1,536
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    38
    Baldcat,

    The web site is very in process, but will improve as time goes on. Thanks for offering to post it.

    The URL is https://www.mmrfbz.org . The server is off line right now. The site is pretty generic and blah now, but, soon it will pick up. Go ahead and post it if you think it is worth posting, butt don't expect much right now!

    You should talk with Joel and ask him if you can post his url for his amazing aquaponics system :wav: , https://www.backyardaquaponics.com . That is an amazing site! Inspirational!

    Christopher
     
  16. baleboy

    baleboy Junior Member

    Joined:
    Aug 30, 2005
    Messages:
    50
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    hi all

    man dont you guys work or something!!!!

    your right chris i am chuffed about being part of starting this exploision of brain energy

    chris what is your website ?? i would love to get an idea of what you do

    also i think you are the perfect candidate for the aquaponics system given your psychotic weather situation

    and joel your right i do have a yard full of worms and it makes sense to use them

    one thing i love abour permaculture is its amazing ability to fit into any climate or situation. it is a great framework to help pretty much anyone become more productive and less harmful to the planet at the same time

    joel thanks for the idea about the worm juice hydroponics great idea
    do you have any links or sites for the solution ingredients or strength
    i was wondering if you had a raised worm bed or box, fed with chicken poo, scraps etc you could have a tray underneath that collected the juice then went through drippers in to the garden that would be better for my small space

    i would all it chicka-vermi-ponics haha

    i still would love to grow fish in my back yard though just to get back to the aquaponics thing which is why where all here

    i think growing carp is not such a good idea baldcat

    firstly you dont really want to eat them yourself (i have and they are average, not the worst ive ever eaten but that was with a lot of curry )
    so instantly you need a lot of fossil fuel energy to ship them to whatever factory for fetiliser
    second our rivers in australia are choking with those bastards i think it is better that we keep the supply coming from the rivers who need a hand

    three if you want fertiliser for your garden use compost or something else or grow gourmet delicious fish that sells for a hundred times more than stinky cant kill em disgusting filthy imported brown water making carp

    fourth carp can live in very poor water you could probably almost grow them in a tank with a large surface area and nothing else. they are elated to the toughest kid friendlly fish of all the goldfish many goldfish tanks have no aeration and are almost always neglected and they still manage to survive

    i like aquaponics because our rivers all over the world are struggling from lots of things so to grow high quality fresh water fish is a good thing because we need native fish in our rivers to keep whats left of that ecosystem alive

    perhaps, if you are that way inclined, you could grow native species to your area: eat some, sell some, and every so often put some back in the river
    now that is wholistic baby
     
  17. baldcat

    baldcat Junior Member

    Joined:
    Jul 29, 2005
    Messages:
    452
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Hey baleboy,,

    I agree on the Carp I must admit is was a thoughtless post that sprang to mind... I have the habit of posting before thinking.... But I guess the best ideas come that way...

    I do work,, but as I am an IT Manager, I have lots of time on the PC to float arond website etc etc,,, One day I will leave this rutt, and buy a farm on an island and live happily ever after... Ahhh one day..

    Just discussing this water thing with a work mate, who happened to study enviro science in Lismore.. (but now an accountant - go figure), and we talking af the benefits of having your pond / water source with deep changes.. Ie like a triangle.. shallow at one end so the water in solarised and kills nasty like bits.. But then moving to a depp end where the water in less airobic (spelling - tring to say water has less air), as in the same principles of harvesting gas from manure, the deep water breaks down the gear that the shallow water can't.. (ok of on tangent now).. Anyway I'm refering all this to the earlier discussion on the advanced system, involing goats / chickens etc etc.... (ok making no sense now..) :pottytrain3:
     
  18. earthbound

    earthbound Junior Member

    Joined:
    Apr 25, 2005
    Messages:
    603
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    What?? Work??????? Naaaaaaaa..... :D

    Well not much anyway, and working from home on the computer makes it easy to scan lists while feigning work... :)

    Sorry Christopher, I probably shouldn't have mentioned that I found your site, as I do realise that it's not ready for people to look at, ooooppps :roll: I can be a bit of an inquisitive sticky beak sometimes.. :dontknow:

    Hey anyone who wants to put links to my site can feel free. Recently I discovered that the people I have my domain through keep a track of where the hits to my site are coming from. That was an interesting find as I found there's been a lot of hits coming from a hydroponic pot growing discussion group, seems they're very interested in the subject..

    Marcus, I can't remember the addresss of the website where I read about the vermi-ponics, though they had done some trials comparing standard hydroponic solution vs aquaponics vs worm juice. Worm juice came out miles in front as the winner and aquaponics came in an absolute dismal last, but their tests were flawed. Aquaponic systems take about three months to initialize and build up bacteria colonies to provide food for the plants, it doesn't work just straight off...

    I've tried a bit of a search for the veri-ponics but all I've come up with are links to cannabisworld.org :weedman: :color:

    It would be pretty simple to try an experiment and I imagine the easiest way would be using some sort of dripper application as you suggested. Pots of sawdust/coconut fibre/perlite or whatever you happen to have for the plants to grow in, on a trickle/drip feed of fairly dilute worm juice... Gee when you think about it there are many different ways you could do it, horizontal pvc pipes stacked vertically to save space, NFT guttering... But I think these generally have cycling pumping systems, much better idea just to have a trickle/drip feed which doesn't have to be pumped...

    This is a good method of using up space which can't be used for growing anything else normally, like an area of concrete or a bare wall. Theres a great system using old 2 litre cool drink bottles with their bottoms cut off, suspended upside down, one above each other. Water drips from one to the other down the line, with plants growing in each container, until they drain into a tank at the bottom before being pumped up to the top again. It could be done very cheaply with a small 12V pump as there is very little volume being pumped.

    Anyway, enough of the techno stuff, I need to go out and get my hand dirty in some real dirt..... :D
     
  19. baldcat

    baldcat Junior Member

    Joined:
    Jul 29, 2005
    Messages:
    452
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Consider yourself linked up :D
     
  20. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

    Joined:
    Jul 9, 2005
    Messages:
    1,536
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    38
    Joel,

    No problem on the website. By the time his thread reaches millions of people, the site will be ready :lol: .

    Wow, man, like hydroponic ganja, whoa-ooo man, d'ja hear about that? Dude, ganja aquaponics, man :weedman: :wav: :weedman: Couldn't work here. Ganja is very against the law, and is very common. Cultivation brings massive Police presence, potential jail time and very big fines. Many farmers here used to cultivate it, many years ago...

    The bottles on the wall. Does pumping need to be round the clock?

    Marcus, as for being able to write back so quickly, these days I am working on my new kitchen, laying stone. It's right next to my house. I wander around the farm, collecting bananas and breadnuts, avocados and chai'ookh (Kekchi name for an edible ginger flower), coco and cassava, coconut and carambola, soursop and anona, etc and etc, and return to the computer to see the latest.

    Sometime in December I am developing a spring for pumping way off by the property line, so will only be on line in the evening... :cry: :lol:

    I am gainfully unemployed, working here at the project with a small grant, which covers much of the expenses of the project and has enabled us to build housing, buy a newer truck, etc, and I am selling solar stuff on the side, which makes me some money, plus the occasional consultancy for solar or agroforestry.

    The project theoretically will make some money hosting student groups. We just had Peace Corps, for example, which made the organization money, and I made some, too, for lecturing about food security and biodiversity.

    Living on a farm has its advantages. I don't need to buy much food, for example, and I have to leave to spend any money... and I don't leave but once a week or two.

    Huge digression there, sorry, but I am fortunate in many ways. This forum is very exciting for me, and this concept of aquaponics :wav: is off the charts, beyond all... and that is where I need to be in the rapidly approaching future.

    Anyway, I look forward to reading more.

    Goodnight all o'y'all in Oz,

    Christopher :wave:
     

Share This Page

-->