Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Yes I think that aquaponic song was linked to a while back...... It's a classic.....

I was surprised how closed-minded (arrogant) some of the comments were. I was going to wait a couple of days and post a response and they closed the section. I think is somewhat dump of the Times to close it....just from a marketing standpoint, you would think they would want to keep people returning to the site just for the ad revenue!

hahahahaha..... Hello.... Just too much interest for them to keep it going perhaps, too much work....

Or is it a standard that they only leave comments open for a few days?

Where has that song been all my life?!?

I checked some of the other articles and they all seem to close the comments after a couple of days. It must make it easier for the media to censor our freedom of speech.

Another article: http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/20 ... sh-farming

I find it interesting that they are raising bara in the US! Maybe we'll get access to them soon...

Just a quick followup: Most of the excitement from the article has died down. On average, I'm getting around 40-50 more hits/day on the video.

Someone from University of Connecticut agricultural dept. tracked me down and if a group (20+) people could come see my setup and for me to speak there. I'm not sure how I'm going to fit 20+ people in that little greenhouse!

That's okay... opening the publics eyes and breaking the dirt garden paradigm will take time... One step at a time, with each exposure, whether in the NYTimes or small group seminars or individual introductions to AP, we get there....

Keep up the good work and take the opportunities you have as we all should.

CB

Another NY Times article was published today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/busin ... 1&src=tptw

Thats wierd... I had a news paper in England contact me and ask questions, now I read some of what I said to them, in the NYtimes...? Oh well, all good AP talk getting out and about.

Groovy

Great article, but question: can you feed fish purely on worms? I guess in theory you can but has anyone done it?

This guy did it.
http://www.stevequayle.com/News.alert/0 ... Barrel.pdf

Unfortunately, someone got their info wrong. The article implies that the only feed to the fish is worms fed by scraps of veggies from the system and that there are no other inputs. Perpetual motion, anyone? While it is certainly possible for the plants and fish to get some of what they need (I'm thinking O2 and H2O) for free, the potassium, nitrogen, iron, phosphorous, etc need to come in as fish feed or fertilizer. One can not take out more nutrients from a system than go in! The best you are getting from the worm farm is preventing some nutrients from leaving, thus reducing outside inputs.

I've seen this sort of confusion a few times now. I'm quick to jump on it too. Some one might call an aquaponics system a closed loop system. Now most people who really know aquaponics might say that but what they really mean might be more like "I'm not removing the solids and therefore don't need to supplement as much so therefore I see it as a closed loop" but the reporters and the people reading the article get closed loop as being you don't have to add ANYTHING but the truth is, a truly closed loop, you don't get to harvest anything either unless you are living in the system and returning your own waste to the system, so no we are not growing any aquaponic humans so there are no closed loop aquaponic systems.

If you harvest anything from the system, you will need to add something back to it, some how. Just the scraps from the veggies to a worm bin doesn't quite make up the lack. Bugs being fed to the fish can probably go a long way to flying in your extra needed nutrients but I don't know if that can really make up for the harvested fish and veggies in a heavily producing system either.