aquaponics triponics invention

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

  1. earthbound

    earthbound Junior Member

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    Christopher,

    Good to hear that your able to get by having such a diverse income.. Staying at home is one of the main things I find useful, if you don't leave the house you don't spend money. Apart from ebay of course, and alibris.. But then books don't count, the way I see it they're investments,nutrition for the mind and just as important as food for the body, sometimes even more so as they can teach you to feed your body in better ways.

    The bottle walls, or verticle aquaponics as it's been called before doesn't need to be going all of the time. I'm not to sure of the exact details but the pioneers of the concept can be found here
    bagelhole.org/index.html
    They have modified their systems a bit recently and don't have as many picures any more but theres lots of info.

    Baldcat, (it seems funny writing and saying that name :D ) I think I understand what your talking about with the shallow water areas. Something like the designs used in natural swimming pools, where theres an area of shallow water for the sun to pentrate and do it's work..

    Sun is shining, must peel myself off the chair and get dirty.

    Joel
     
  2. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Joel,

    Yes, I have been pretty lucky in some things.

    I worked for a chocolate company, which was the best job I could have ever had, for about 7 years. I managed the extension program, the buying, shipping, exporting, internal control mechanism (for organic and Fairtrade),. I also got to see lots of great farms all over Central America. I saw some really inspiring things (none as inspiring as aquaponics :wav: , though).

    It was the best job for me. and during that time I wrote or participated in writing about USD600,000 in grant proposals. This has been a useful skill set for a post Green & Black's life. I won't bore you here with details of how Green & Black's turned from a great company to a crummy employer as I have posted about this before, but I am very grateful for all the on job training I got from them, along with the bye bye bonus, which enabled us to spend a year working on doing this.

    The solar thing, too, has been good. I like solar, and I do neat, tidy, safe installations and have happy customers. I sell about a dozen panels a year, and one or two larger systems. Keeps me busy and gets me enough money for Amazon.com (MY weakness, books, books, the occasional DVD or three, and stay at home spending spree).

    We don't make much money, but our quality of life is pretty good
    8) . We eat well :lol: ! We are right now working with a collector from the U of Floridas Ethnobotany program. She is staying here a few nights a week, and cataloging the Kekchi and Mopan names for indigenous plants. That pays nothing, but Chrissie is a hoot, and she brings good coffee :lol: .

    I can sleep, now, but I still get excited about aquaponics :wav: , Chrissie got an earful, but towards the end she started asking questions... could have a convert.

    Thanks again for sharing all of your information.

    Best,

    Christopher
     
  3. baleboy

    baleboy Junior Member

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    so guys after all that flurry of words

    what are you going to actually try

    chris are you going to try just the straught system

    anyone else ???
     
  4. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Marcus,

    February 6th to 20th of next year we have a PDC course here with Toby Hemenway and Penny Livingston. Everything we are doing now leads up to that event.... we are working on housing, a new kitchen, planting veggies for them to eat, etc, however, when that is done we will be working one making a pond, close to where we have been working to establish the goat pastures.

    The idea there is to stack functions, with pumping to water the goats also being able to fill the pond, the pond for the goats to drink from (maybe), and manure for the fish, or to raine algae for the fish.

    We have funding which is designated specifically towards ponds to improve food security. Fish has been a traditionaly important source of protein for the Kekchi and Mopan Maya of Toledo, but the fish have now all but disappeared from the rivers. The cause of the loss of fish inthe river and diet has been a mix of increasing human population densities, improved access to markets for the fish, damage to the riparian zone and habitat for the fish, (some of it by good minded people who want to "improve" the river,) and a general view of the commons of the fish in the rivers as being a resource to get... before someone else does.

    On this river, when I first visited this watershed in 1987 and subsequently moved here in 1988, the river was teeming with fish. Thgere were so much fish, machaca, dermalong, tuba, etc, that the disapearance of the fish would have been unimaginable. One day I counted the fish in one pool on the river and it had at least 85 machaca floating lazily on the surface. Now, if I see one fish my heart starts pounding. They are all gone.

    For improved food security, aquaculture is a good way to bring that source of food back into the diet on a sustainable and controllable level. If we can get it to work we will be able to replicate it locally.

    So ponds next year, close to the goat dairy we need to start next year(which is another unexploited source of protein here, though goat milk is common in other parts of the humid lowland tropics...).

    So we have to start building the first pond next year, and then we need toget the goat dairy sorted...

    We will be looking for funding for the aquaponics system :wav: at UNDP, DfID, Brit Hi Com, and through private foundations, but if I can get the money together myself, (which is difficult here when you are chronically underemployed), I would do it myself. If the project could generate enough income in the next year, we could start on it through income generated by hosting student groups or workshops.

    Anyway, assuming we have funding after February of next year, after the pond (s) (which we do have funding for) are done, we could start on the aquaponics system :wav: .

    To start with I would just do the straight system, until I felt confident in managing it. I think that is the key to any further programs.

    I have also been interested in spirulina, which requires some of the same sort of infrastructure, pumps, tanks, translucent roofing, so a parallell system would be a place to begin. Tying in nutrient flows from goat manure to the spirulina, spirulina to fish, excess veggies to chooks and rabbitts, rabbit manure to worms... etc, as I posted earlier, could flow from this, but the foundation on which the rest would be built would be based around the aquaponics system :wav: as heart.

    I have picked out where it could go, if it is not much bigger than 8x15 meters. I want to put it at the north edge of a Maya plaza, near where the hill starts to rise up, and close to the central future goat paddock. It is the only flat area available :lol: .

    I am excited to see the copy of Joels book that he has sent me so I can start to wrap my head around cost of equipment, size of building, etc. Once that is done, I can start to budget for pipes, tanks, roofing, posts, etc, but my budget will additionally need to include a photovoltaic system to run the pumps.

    So eventually we would love to have the interconnected web, biogas, fish, hydroponics, worms, goat dairy, spirulina, rabbits, chooks/ducks, water hyacinth and yabbies, and I will try to get them all involved somehow, but getting the aquaponics system :wav: up and running is the place from which any and all of this would flow, and is a huge accomplishment on its own.

    I like projects that take a long time. We built a house out of stone and chainsaw milled luber which took five years from ground breaking to moving in, and its still not finished after living in to for a year! This system should keep me busy for some time, too.

    This is a huge diversion from anything I have ever done, so I am excited and a wee bit intimidated, but mostly excited. 17 years ago I knew next to nothing about agriculture, and I have built up some useful information and a pretty good view of true cost of agriculture.

    Parts of our farm are working as we designed them to, with ongoing nutrient cycling, massive caloric production, etc. Not all is, but we see where we have made mistakes, and we have made many mistakes (unsuitable plant guilds, poor spacing horizontally, vertically AND temporally, innapropriate siting...). Parts of the system are snapping into a very simplified whole ecosystem mode, and these islands of production, where calories flow from the system at a super minimal expense of calries in, are becoming attached via corridors of plant communities that are developing into this stage, which themselves are expanding at the periphery. In another five years much of the system should be a closed modified rainforest of food, timber, fiber and medicinals.

    Now I am on the threshold of exciting things on this whole other concept, this utterly brilliant aquaponics system :wav: which ties in neatly with what we are doing, what we want to do in the future, and is so exciting in and of itself.

    I got to go. Dawn is telling me she needs help..

    More later.

    Christopher
     
  5. Penny

    Penny Junior Member

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    More aquaponics

    Hey I'm going to make you guys and galls jealous' I've been to SEE the aquaponics system!!!!!!!!! It is great! I'm really fired up to use this in the marron set up. Using the water from the purging tanks for the veggies.
    Joel showed me the set up and sent me home with all sorts of goodies for the garden, and he drinks really nice beer!
    Apart from that even at the end of winter his veggies were better than mine are in warmer weather
    Thanks so much Joel.
     
  6. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Penny,

    Lucky you! I AM envious! SO envious! OOOOOOH HOW COOL!

    We have three volunteers on the farm, and we spent the evening going through the potential relationships built around this incredibly coo aquaponics system :wav: ! And YOU got to go see it!

    The veggie winter thing is such an endorsement. OOOOOH, we will have to speed up the program....

    I am green with envy!

    C
     
  7. Penny

    Penny Junior Member

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    Aquaponics

    One of the things that amazed me about the system was how healthy the veggies were and how little damage was caused by insect predation. The whole set up looked so effective, and you know how something that is practical and functional because the design is right, is also a thing of beauty, well that is the feeling you get when you see it in reality.
    I also gotthe book and read it last night from cover to cover and can seesome really practical applications. I like Joels tanks because I like the corrugated iron but he has included a number of other methods that can use recycled materials and may be cheaper options.
    The book is well writen with plenty of diagrams and lots of problems and how Joel solved them, it is easy to read and to pick up sections when you are looking for a specific pieceof information.
    Great effort Joel!!
     
  8. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Penny,

    I'm so glad to hear that you have seen the aquaponics system :wav: , and that it impressed you so much. I'm impressed and I have only seeen it on line!

    How much work do yo think it will be to set the system up?

    As for insect damage, that is a big problem here, especially in the wet season,when between proliferation of insects and heavy downpours, nice leafy greens, like chinese cabbage, get eaten into pathetic lacy things, and thge rain can flatten anything as delicate as a chinese cabbage.

    Are you going to build a system like Joels?

    Amazing!

    Christopher
     
  9. Penny

    Penny Junior Member

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    aquaponics

    I am definitely going to use aquaponics at the farm. Before the marron and fish are sold they have to be purged so the tank water would be used more than once.Water is probably our most precious resource here, not that you would think the way so much is wasted, automatic reticulation on couch grass (should be classed as a noxious weed) while the rain pours down. So I would use the purge tanks as the water supply and then just keep some fish for personal use at other times. The grow beds would provide shade if I place them correctly. My Dad grows beautiful orchids as well and is going to give me some. They are cimbidiums and make a beautiful cut flower so I'm trying to work out how they can be incorporated in the system.
    I dont have any real idea about what it will cost me but, I am the biggest re cycler around,(read scrounger) and have a lot of stuff already. I will make my stands from recycled steel as that is what I have and I'm sure I will be able to use some large food grade plastic drums cut down tht I have. Mine won' look as neat but the effect, will I hope, be the same.
    I think that the isect damage is lessened because a) grow beds are off the ground and b) the plants are so healthy so they recover if attacked and c) a health system is in balance.
    Wow this is soooo good!
     
  10. earthbound

    earthbound Junior Member

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    Those blue plastic barrels are great for a cheap aquaponic system Penny.. And thats really what it's all about, if you can put together something cheap, something made from recycled bits, your doing it all that little bit better, better for the world, better for yourself...

    The main reason my system is built using the tanks, supports etc that I have, is because I wanted to keep maximum resale value for my house. Plus being an experimental system, it was always going to be an example and as such I wanted it to be difficult to fault by people who saw it. If it was made from all recycled bits and pieces it would be harder to bring around your average Joe to the concept. But with everything matching with the nice currugated iron tanks and big chunky limestone and wood supports, it has the aesthetic value as well. People could picture something like it in their own backyard, trying to reach the general public isn't such an easy thing and looks are so important.

    Personally now I would rather work on simpler systems made from more recycled materials, when I get some more space, I must sell this place first so that I can buy some space where I can experiment more...

    Thanks for your kind words Penny..... :)
     
  11. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Joel,

    I had another look at your system on line, and I am again impressed with how fruitful and clean looking it is. No messy pipes, no manky collections of pipes and pipe pieces. It looks very attractive to the eye.

    I think your system is a wonderful system (you know me and my emoticon buddies are big fans of the aquaponics system, come on out, guys, go ahead, do the wave, :wav: , thanks!), and the fact that it is so neat and tidy is a big seller to someone who might otherwise be turned off by a motley connection of old bathtubs and stock barrels, etc. Very neat, very simple looking.

    Penny, I agree, it really is soooo good, isn't it?

    WAY TO GO JOEL!

    Christopher
     
  12. earthbound

    earthbound Junior Member

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    Soon you'll be able to get more of a fix Christopher, your book is on the way, I posted it yesterday.... Lots of video segments, over an hour all up and hundreds of pictures, it should keep you going for a while, at least until you can build your own.
     
  13. ~Tullymoor~

    ~Tullymoor~ Junior Member

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    So, Joel, I just went and had another squizz too...very very nice...I love corrugated iron :D but how and where did you get those little bubby-short-a*se water tanks from???
     
  14. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Joel,

    I will start haunting my PO box tomorrow :wink: !

    Ahhhhh, I can't wait! Christmas time, oh-oh-oh-oh-o-o-ooh! Christmas time, Christmas, in Septe-e-e-mber! Yeah!

    "When's ot going to get there? ! I want it! I neee-e-e-ed it!"

    Oooh yeah, gonna lose some sleep tonight! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

    C
     
  15. earthbound

    earthbound Junior Member

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    They're made by a rainwater tank manufacturer Tullymoor. All corrugated iron water tanks are rolled rivited sealed etc to custom sizes. I went looking for a steel tank manufacturer in the hope that they would have a broken or damaged tank that I could use for the fish, as a fibreglass fish tank was going to cost me $500 upwards.

    When I spoke to the man he had no damaged ones but told me he could make any tanks I wanted at any size, short ones, tall ones, fat ones, with or without drain holes.. So I decided to get the whole lot done out of corrugated iron even the drain tank which could have been a large plastic bucket, makes a cute mini tank.

    https://members.iinet.net.au/~jmalcolm/i ... G_1352.jpg

    It's only about 500mm across..

    They are not the cheapest method of doing things but are comparable if not cheaper than plastic or fibreglass.
     
  16. Penny

    Penny Junior Member

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    Aquaponic tanks

    I love the look of the corugated iron tank and would love mine to look like that. If I can locate some old damaged tanks I would use them. Have a boilermaker welder in the family who can help so that is an option. Like I said Joels setup is so aesthetically pleasing as well. I have a HUGE ammount of corrugated sheets in good condition, hmm.
     
  17. baleboy

    baleboy Junior Member

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    joel

    how important is the surface area of the tank for oxegenation

    is it better to have a tank that is shallow and wide also for sunlight penetration and warmth???

    are these things and issue

    the reason i ask is that some yuppy friends of mine have a metre high vase that is quite narrow and they keep killing teir goldfish (ow do you kill a goldfish )

    the teory we came up with was the small amount of surface area for oxegen transfer

    am i on the right track??

    or no clue status!
     
  18. earthbound

    earthbound Junior Member

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    The surface area can be extremely important if oxygenation is going to be an issue. If you have a bubbler or constant water splashing etc, some sort of mechanical means by which air is being added to the water then it's not so important. Generally in tanks with lots of fish you want to keep the sunlight away from the water, as a rule most fish don't like the sun so they will grow slower and it can mean that you have more problems with algae.

    So far as your friends goldfish goes, I would say yep theres a good chance thats the reason their goldfish keep turning up their fins.

    If they insist on having a fish in a tall skinny container they should look at having a Siamese fighting fish (Betta Splendens) they look just as nice as a goldfish if not better and they have the added advantage of having a breathing tube which they use to breath from the water surface, this means they can survive in water with very low oxygen levels, so long as they can get to the surface.
     
  19. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Joel,

    I GOT THE BOOK!!!!!!! THANK YOU (thankyou, thankyou, thankyou, thankyou....)!!!

    I got it today at the post office, and have had my nose in it on and off all afternoon (waiting in line at the bank, waiting for lunch at Graces Restaurant, waiting for our wonderful vounteer from UK, Anna, to run in and out of a store...) It is so inspiring!

    I will say that right off the bat it is obviously well written and easy to understand, especially for someone like me who likes the idea of aquaponics ( :wav: ) but is a bit, well, frankly, intimidated by the whole thing. I especisally like the photos of the building process and the overflowing veggie beds. Can we all say inspirational? I know I can...

    I see that marrons are much bigger than yabbies. And breem are big fish, and while we will have to find other species here, I think your book is EXCELLENT!!!!

    I jus wanted to say thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!

    I haven't tried the CD or DVD yet, and will get back to you later about those.

    I am also going to write and submit a book review for any and all in a bout a weeks time. Stay tuned!

    Incidentally, I just got on a dealers list for another solar company, and got their huge solar catalog, with pricing. This would normally be quite exciting stuff for me, but other than a cursory glance, I have not even looked at it, and don't imagine I will be able to for some time as Backyard Aquaponics :wav: :wav: :wav: is a meaty, substantial and inspiring work. You are to be commended for your work (your award is still here, waiting for the dang tee shirts...). Awesome!

    From me, personally, and on behalf of the board of directors of Maya Mountain Research Farm, thank you for a copy of your incredible book.

    Yours in Development,

    Christopher
     
  20. Steve J.

    Steve J. Junior Member

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    Joel,

    Have you tried Australian Bass in your system or do you know if any one else has? I have them in my dams as they are the indigenous to my local creeks and rivers, they do fantastically well in the dams and I suspect would do well in the aquaponics system also. They are not commercially available but many recreational fishers rate them as Australia’s best freshwater table fish (above barra etc). Having followed this thread with intense interest and looking right through your site I have decided to go down the path of an aquaponics set up. Meg (my lovely wife) works for the local library and she was wondering if you sell your book/dvd/cd to libraries? If not we will buy it for ourselves.

    Thanks
    Steve
     

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