Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Some years back I watched Paul Stamets on TED Talks - http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_on_6_ways_mushrooms_can_save_the_world.html

The things mushrooms and other fungi can do are little short of miraculous (hence the title) and I am wondering, apart from composts, what other uses we could put them to in Ap systems.

For example, do you know we could make Vitamin D-rich mushrooms?

Oyster mushrooms are a very useful species for a number of things and reasons.

They are absolutely voracious and are not prone to contamination, making them very
easy to cultivate for even the beginner. You can use them to recycle the cardboard that
you would normally throw away into food, with a very efficient bio-conversion might I add.
One lb of dry cardboard easily equals one pound of fresh oyster mushrooms once you get
your method down.

The spent mushroom substrate can then be used for a high quality worm food and makes
a spectacular vermicompost. That vermicompost could be applied in the form of a tea as a
foliar feed for your AP system, or sold at a local farmers market or to a hydroponics shop.
AACT (actively aerated compost teas) are great as a foliar feed because you are introducing
aerobic, plant benefiting bacteria to the leaves, which are often the plants first line of defense
against fungal and other bacterial infections. There is also calcium in AACT, which is reported
to be one of the lacking nutrients in AP systems. The worms can also be used as a protein
source for the fish.

Mushrooms themselves are also very high in protein and other nutrients. Here is a link to
the nutritional data on oyster mushrooms- http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/veg ... cts/3050/2
Supplementing mushrooms to a diet with fish seems like it would be very good way to get
protein without much bad fat and cholesterol like what beef contains. They have a large
amount of potassium as well, more than bananas.

I don't know if you could grow them directly in an AP system unless you were using a coconut
fiber substrate, and even then they might be more prone to contamination. Would still be a nice
experiment though!

I've been wondering about utilizing half... or even whole barrels for tree groves in AP. It might be a method of encouraging a mycelium - perhaps not a 'stand alone' pot, but one that filters through a couple of grow beds before going back to the FT... I don't know that anyone has enough system to risk it.

Would any mushroom be toxic to our fish friends? They grow wild around some pretty impressive plant species... but most are ''woody' rather than leafy.

I don't know that a coconut substrate would be your answer... They'll grow (depending on the 'shroom) on a number of 'waste' products-- or 'dead' material. I wonder if something more like a 'grow tower' would work... and like some of TC's experiments... a minimal amount of water in, a 'darkened' grow space, and collection of waste water directly to the dirt garden, rather than back into the system. If we consider seeding some half barrels as shroom production that collect/ are repository for dead leaf material, excess root clipping...etc (because I'm in a housing tract with 'yard police' and having chickens... even as few as three... is problematic.) and again, the wet run off directly to the dirt garden.

Actually, fish will eat mushroom substrates. Heres a thread over at the shroomery detailing some of the info-
http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showfla ... r/12329690