Aquaponics c c Growing Your Greens (13min) m/watch?v=kENge18w Iqg Will Allen on tilapia

Aquaponics a sustainable, food production system that combines conventional aquaculture (raising aquatic animals such as snails, fish,crayfish or prawns in tanks), with hydroponics (cultivating plants in water) in a symbiotic environment.

Here are the 2 parts:

History

These polycultural farming systems existed in many Far Eastern countries and raised fish South China & Thailand cultivated and farmed rice in paddy fields in combination with fish as early aquaponics systems.

Facilities to Raise Fish are evolving

 Monoculture: Raising single species in structure  Polyculture: Raising two or more species in same structure

Ponds  Most common structure for raising fish  Natural Ponds  Manmade Ponds  Drainable  Must be built near a water supply

Raceways  Manmade tanks (indoors or outdors)  Usually made of concrete  Must be near a water source  Common in fish hatcheries

Examples:

 Rectangular shaped, commonly 5:1 (or greater) length to width ratio  Average depth of 3- 5 feet  Constant water flow to eliminate areas of poor circulation

Silos  Deep cylinder tanks, similar in operation to horizontal raceways  Concrete, plastic, etc.  Have less surface area than raceways  Easier to fit into operation

Cages  Use existing water sources (pond), but enclose the fish in a cage  Cheaper initial investment that other set ups

Closed or Recirculating Systems  Indoor tank, recirculates same water through the tank

…just add plants and you have aquaponics

Common system:

Here is how it works:

This is the cycle

Here are details

Using the ground for cooling purposes:

vermicomposting Remember Fred? watch?v=JFGQR5ERaPQ (9min) educational video Worms are our friends…

They use coconuts at Growing Power.

This is fairly easy to set-up for a small system

This could be set up with bins from Walmart

Lowe’s has a $10 earth box clone from Growums

This guy has found a way to trade or recycle everything!

He started with plants …and added the fish simplified.com/hydroponic- plants.html simplified.com/hydroponic- seeds.html *You MUST provide bright light close to the flat, or the babies will grow long and spindly and flop over. We're talking only 1-2" above the plants! Don't skip past this bit of advice! Bright fluorescent lighting creates thick, short, stocky, healthy seedlings.

There are ways to be creative…

Well, plants are people, too! Ck46mU9o Jfl swampthing

Mythbusters: watch?v=fStmk7e9lJo watch?v=fStmk7e9lJo Plants have feelings (6 min) min on vimeo an episode on talking to plants

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