Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Travis Hughey, aquaponic designer and author of the 'barrel-ponics' manual is presently at home in the U.S. designing and building the full scale systems he will later be reproducing in Kenya.

His system will be based loosely on his barrel ponics design except using a 400 gallon flood tank, dumping the water down through a 3 inch pipe, and the system will be built from ferrocement.

Hi Travis

Noted your comment in the "about the book" topic area thing (?!) that the whole aquaponics idea could be great for the poor areas of the world. Seems that someone else thinks so too!

http://members.tripod.com/melvinlanders/page9.html

Aquaponics without electricity. I'd be interested in supporting people out there educating and enabling this form of food production for the poor nations out there. If you know how, or who, plz let us know.

L3nny

Hi l3nny

I to live in Birkdale. Do you have a system up and running?

Aussieponic

Thanks for the link to the site l3nny, made a good read - made me wonder what I could have achieved back in South Africa when I taught in a rural school for 3 years

just wondering - surely there must be a better or more acurate name for 'fish poo' than manure...

the more I reread the article, the more which jumps out at me as wrong, or poorly described...
In the article they talk about removing the solids, but totally leave out the nitrogen cycle!

THis extract for example to me is missing some key information as to the workings of a system like this...

While it is true, no mention of deadly amonia or the friendly bacteria which take care of it...

hi Aussieponic.

Yep, a little system. Grow bed over fish tank inside ... Not my dream setup, obviously! heheh

L3nny

fish scrap, according to
http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/Cow+poo

maybe aquamad u could contact him and offer to "add to" his explanations so it's more technically correct?
Maybe we could assume he was directing it all that the uneducated people who wish to remain uneducated?

L3nny

that was my thought. Just a "this works" not a "why does this work or how does this work" perfect for the masses

I really like this idea. However, it demands manual aeration, and the 'pump' looks to be rather labour intensive, and hard on the back for old codgers like (insert name here)

I guess in a country where the main resource is labour it shouldn't matter so much.

Plastic sheet.... How much of this is lying around Africa.

Anyone know where I'd need to look to find out how to sun bake some clay concoction thus waterproofing it? So the beds channels etc are all baked hard, and made of clay/straw etc - natural and available materials. Add water, medium (more clay or local stone) and fish, find an easier or more efficient manual pump/aeration...

This I would throw money into.

Lot of sun in Africa, how do I get it to shift water without a solar panel and a pump... Only need to move it from fish to top of system, gravity can do the rest.

Raw clay (wet) is used to seal ponds. Straw can be used to stabilize un-fired clay, but of course burns out if the clay is fired.

Sun won't bake clay hard enough to waterproof it. However, if you'd dig out the shape you want, line it with clay, let it dry well, and then build a good several-day fire in it, that would bisque fire it. The risk would be cracking it as it cooled or during use. You need to get clay up in the neighborhood of 2000F, and typically a little higher if you want glaze. Mom and Dad were potters (among other things), and Dad is a Cone 6 glaze specialist in his 'retirement'. Yet another colonial craft I learned.

There are many people people here who are also interested and some that are actively involved in setting up systems directly aimed at doing that!

eg. Joel's book and CD. - Joel has been guiding several people in Developing countries.

We have members in Belize, El Salvador, Bali, Ache, Indonesia who are actively involved in setting up systems and educating poor people.

Also I stumbled across these aquaculture organisations which may be useful.

www.aquaculturewithoutfrontiers.org

www.asemaquaculture.org

www.growfish.com.au

Top notch. Thank you Johnnie and Janet!

I need to work on here for a while till I have someone to carry the AP torch in NZ. We have pollution problems, poverty in small pockets.

My heart is in getting hands on experience in working with natural materials for aquaponic construction. And applying it where the needs really lie.

Just a bit lost for direction, ie: where to start. This is a good start I'll keep searching and learning and anything else you may want to show me is most welcome.

I am interested in terra cotta for the AP vessels, gutter, etc. Which member was hooked up with the pottery factory?

TimC? Simmo? someone in Perth I think