Michael, go nuts on your commercial ideas here.
I wish to utilise an area no more than 120 m2 for the purpose of setting up a small owner/operator style aquaponic business. This would be of a size that someone with a little wee bit of land could make a go of it. A model.
Some commandments I've made for myself in this.
Plan, plan, plan!.
Don't plant anything until I have a market for it.
Don't build a system till I know what I'll grow in it.
Plant several crops so if one fails I can survive off the others.
I'm lucky in that I have my greenhouse for R&D.
My first experiment is with planting. Beds will have corn complemented by beans growing up, with all sorts at bed top level (1 metre) and tomatoes and cucumbers growing down. I hope to organise the explosive chaos I see in Joels beds. I will try to successively plant a line of beds so as some corn and beans finish more is growing halfway in the next bed type thing.
The runoff water will service a floating raft channel of herbs and some DWC buckets of chillies, to see if the second hand water is strong enough to support either...
I definately want to learn how to do Aqua nft strawberries as well. Every man and his dog grows lettuce so not really interested in them the price for fancy is no longer fancy. For maximising profit I need a vertical system that doesn't cost an arm and a leg or require rocket science. NFT seems cost efficient stacked up against large diameter pipes and the stacking systems you can buy. But removing solids is particularly important in NFT so I've much to experiment with as I go.
I believe beds planted as above then nft may work, but have yet to prove it.
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