Hey There Folks,
My family and I (mostly me...) have been bitten by the Aquaponics bug. Originally I had cleared out a deck over a dirt patch next to our spa with the earnest intention to start a soil garden. My wife and I had determined that it was time to take control of what we put in our bodies. I had been doing some research into what type of planting I would be doing with this rather small (12' x 20') dirt patch in side yard. I was considering using the lumber used to build the deck to create raised grow beds and was intrigued by the square foot method but not "energized."
I'm a computer programmer and web designer so there had to be something out there that would appeal to my sense of techy nerdy-ness. So the dirt patch sat for the next 18 months, in the meantime my chocolate lab had dumped enough mud into our spa to build a mud hut! 'Till one day I hit the stumble button on my Firefox browser and landed on an Auzzy talking about his aquaponics system. Immediately my curiosity was piqued! Here was something that had some serious science behind it and appealed to my other sense, that of hippie-ness. This system could be built out of recycled materials, used 90% less water than traditional soil gardening and could provide for me and mine indefinitely. Not to mention every picture of his plants seemed to be out of a gourmet cooking book! Beautifully scientific! I was hooked.
Since that first video I've soaked up as much information as possible to begin working on my family's system. So now we have a three IBC tote system (styled after Murray Hollam's CHOP MkII design) With three fourteen square foot grow beds and a three hundred gallon fish tank and a sump under one of the beds. The system sits on level ground and I've utilized gravity feed and bell siphon flood and drain with 20mm river rock beds (we're thinking about using lava rock for the next three beds). The bell siphons were quite a challenge to get running consistently. But now that I've "dialed" them in, they system runs like a swiss watch.
We've got nearly a dozen different vegetables growing now (it been two weeks since we got it running.) and everything is working awesomely! In fact I was telling my wife yesterday that now that I didn't have to fiddle with the system anymore all I get to do is watch the plants grow. I've been feeding the plants with sea weed extract and have even put in some ironite to make sure the plants are getting maximum nutrition until the day we get the fish in the tank.
We've decided to go with Tilapia as this is Arizona and we have no restrictions as y'all Auzzies do... Plus the other species of fish seem to take much longer to get to 'plate size.' If anybody has any suggestion as to where to get some fry here in the Phoenix area that would prove most helpful. There was a guy on craigslist who have fry for a quarter a piece but by the time I was ready to buy he was gone.
So here are a few pics of our system hope you like and feel free to make any suggestions. We're noob's at this so any help would be great.
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