Monday, October 11, 2010

Aquaponics


It's nothing much yet, but my aquaponics setup in the side yard is starting to form. I will most likely use my old half wine barrel as the fish tank and I have recently made the grow bed. It's an old wood door sitting on cinder blocks with a 1/2 inch piece of plywood over the door for added support and to spread out the pressure, then 2x12's for sides. An old pond liner I got on sale and never did anything with will finally be put to use as a liner for the bed. So far, all of this has been completed.

The next step will be trying to find some kind of medium. I would prefer Hydroton, but as it is ~$1/L, and I need ~300L, that doesn't look like a possibility. Pea gravel is another choice which may be cheaper, but it will be difficult to find. I also need the tubes and piping (I already have a pump) to go from the tank to the bed and back again.

Once these final, crucial steps are finished, aside from getting the fish, my system will be ready. I want to grow winter vegetables (kale, cabbage, greens, etc...) to test out and fine tune the system and have something edible growing through the incredibly harsh ;) winters we get here in Southern California. hahaha. In early spring (here, February) I will be starting the summer garden for both the aquaponic system and the community garden- more on that in another post.

I also wish to build an aquaponic running greenhouse. Just finished my first design, so we'll see where that leads. It will mainly be for starting seeds to go into the grow bed and growing tomatoes, as they seem to like it much better in the greenhouse than out. If the design comes true, there will also be a living wall in the back, several NFT tables, floating lettuce, and strawberry trees. There will be much more on the greenhouse in future posts, but as it is going to be aquaponic, I decided it should be mentioned in this one as well.

Here's my inspiration: Signzit on youtube-


Pictures will be coming soon, and possibly some designs for the system and greenhouse.

-- kmgx3x

4 comments:

  1. I CAN'T WAIT UNTIL U GET THIS ALL SET UP!!! THIS IS JUST SO FASCINATING TO ME. IS THERE ANYTHING THAT YOU ARE IN NEED OF? WOW, I JUST THOUGHT ABOUT THIS-ARE YOU GOING TO BE DOING THE COMMUNITY GARDEN TOO? MAKE SURE TO TAKE LOTS OF PICTURES!!!
    LOVE YOU MUCH!!!

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  2. I need LOTS of hydroton, which is pretty expensive. It'll be worth it though because it can be reused over and over again.

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  3. Look forward to seeing the completed project

    Lushe
    www.lushe.com.au

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  4. Just wanted to inform you that we have linked to this excellent page in
    http://aquaponics-digest.blogspot.com/
    We wish you well
    Bruce

    ReplyDelete