Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Someone probably fell into a machine at some point and rather then throwing out the batch they processed it through. It took a while for the employee to pass through the system and now everything has been flushed out so they don't need to label it that way any more.

Upton Sinclair would be proud.

Based od by curredt sybtobs, I thig id bight be sprigtibe.

LOL! I'm thinking it's going to be a pretty bad spring for pollen. It's starting early this year.

So it is true after all.

North america really does exist.

I always claimed it was just special effects, but Mrs Bullwinkle claims to have been there, and says its real.

Those tim tams cast the final vote.

Twinkies wont get a look in... once you've had a tim tam...

I can't even remember the last time I actually ate a Twinkie. Or why. They are definitely far outclassed by Tim Tams.

There aren't a whole lot of people I would willingly share my Tim Tams with. This one is an exception, though. We've been sharing them during our early morning playtimes on my days off.

(I am allowed to spoil her, even though she and my daughter live with us right now. My daughter thinks grandmothers should be all about happiness and parental rule-breaking dispensation, and I think that is a most excellent philosophy.)

Look! An Aquaponics-related post!

I can't wait until we have days like this more than once a month.




I got these off Craigslist. They were cheaper than I could have built them for, and look a lot better than if I had made them.

I'm going to stack the small ones (2' x 2') for growing potatoes. I'm not sure yet what I want to plant in the big (6' x 3') ones.

These are the potatoes I planted. Also Yukon golds, but they weren't interesting enough to photograph.


These are planted against the end of the greenhouse. On the other side of the door I planted Jasmine. In the back of my head I'm dreaming up a drip irrigation system for them and the raised garden beds, but first I have to get an ongoing incoming water supply to the greenhouse. Which means figuring out how to run plumbing the 100' from the house back to the greenhouse, and then how to tie it in. (Right now I drag the hose out there every other weekend or so to top up the system.)

I'm also thinking about how I could build a rainwater catchment system on the greenhouse. It might not be enough to supply the garden, but it would be enough for topping up, especially during the winter.

I just have to figure out a good way to install gutters on a hoop-style greenhouse.

Cold water moat secondary fish tank?

Float the grow house?

Sometimes, when I hear some of the current political rhetoric in this country, I think we MUST be a figment of someone's incredibly warped imagination. How could anything so ridiculous *possibly* be real?

But I keep having to get up and go to work in the morning, so, hard as it is for me to accept, apparently it really is real, in spite of everything.

All right. I did it. I ORDERED TILAPIA!!!


Yeah, I gave up on Fish Store Guy. He was nice, and promised me a good deal, but it was just too painful, trying to get him to call me back. My phone phobia overcame my desire for fish.


I really always wanted tilapia in the first place, but I've just never been fully confident I could keep the tank warm enough through the winter to keep them alive, so I had decided to go with catfish. But when I started seeing how much trouble it was going to be to get any, and thinking about having to go through that over and over again, I started wishing again for tilapia, since they'll (theoretically) replenish themselves. Unless they all die from cold.


Then I had a Brilliant Idea.


I have one more 55-gallon aquarium out in the garage. It has a corn snake in it, but he'd be just as happy in a Rubbermaid container like the other one I displaced to make my indoor aquaponic aquarium.

All I have to do is set up the third aquarium sometime before next winter, and before the weather gets cold, bring in some breeding stock to overwinter in the nice warm indoors. Then if the weather goes crazy and I can't keep the ones in the system alive, I've still got backups to start over with come spring.


So I ORDERED TILAPIA!!!


I wish brilliant ideas weren't so slow in coming around. I could have thought of this months ago and saved myself all the catfish phone calling agony.

Hooray!!

Good to see the fishies part of the system coming along.

How many fish did you order?



And this...

Bacon!

I got my parcel today

Thanks.

It's a funny thing, but I was wondering what this bacon salt product was all about.

I've decided to make "winner" a "Thing" on 120 Things, so I've been thinking I'll enter some competitions. So far I have a 100% success rate* at winning, so I'm deluded enough to try again

I figure winning stuff might be a good test of the invention engine, and the competition descriptions act as a pretty good brief.

Anyway, this instructables bacon competition came up in a search the other day. Not really an invention engine thing, but the prize pack includes my new bacon salts, so I figure I have already won




*thanks to a BYAP photo contest a while back