Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

given to you free (but already dead/filleted)

Would you still use aquaponics to grow your vegis or would you conventional (or semi-conventional) gardening?

Just curious - is it worth it - essentially as a fertilizer farm and growing method

Yes!

Having fish means you can't take the easy way out and just whip out the chemicals when something goes wrong or you get attacked by pests.

Also you aren't dumping your water like you would with hydroponics, nor are you pouring water into poor soil so your plants get what they require.

ok well you may take my response with a grain of salt seeing my system is only a week old but for me even just cycling with seasol I can see a huge benefit of these systems.

So far all my plants are doing extremely well much better growth than i have seen in a normal soil garden so I'm very interested to see how things progress over the next year, My understanding is that it takes atleast 12 months for a growbed to mature.

I suppose I can commit myself to saying that primarily it was the fish I was more interested in when starting this project I can say that the fish now are more a byproduct and a bit of fun.

My goal is to produce 100% of our families vegetables

I just moved into a place where my lease says no fish inside or out.

I'm just this second planning a snail and worm powered version so Mrs Bullwinkle doesn't go out in protest at the lack of fresh salads. We run only a single blue barrel system and can get a salad for 2 every day for lunch from it. (when it doesnt have strawberries that I needed to bring to the new house in one half, and hasn't been eaten out by a goat) Mrs Bullwinkle says she can feel the difference in wellbiengness (whatever that means) when she gets fresh organic aquaponic salads (mostly baby spinach and cos lettuce from the little system as compared with supermarket versions of the same.

I like protein so cant tell so much.

Just by way of credentials, Mrs Bullwinkle leans toward the scientific end of the spectrum and away from the ... shall we say... not so scientific end.

and...

our little system paid for itself within 6 months or so after the first bit where nothing was growing. I guess dirt would pay for itself sooner, but with a lot more work (once off gravel washing aside). I haven't eaten any fish yet so fish meat doesn't factor in the economics.

so...

freshness (not much of an argument really, but my salads look so healthy because they want for nothing.
real estate (I can grow my salad on concrete that might not yield as much with conventional methods)
Intensive careness (I planted some wilted tired and almost dead seedlings the other day and they now are going nuts)
yummieness (my cos lettuce look fake because they are so healthy)
organicness (My new crop of coz lettuce have bugs on them but they are just so ripped they dont even care)
transportable convenience (I moved my salad garden from from old rental property to my new)
food metres and carbon footprint ness (my nearest dirt is slightly further away than my nearest concrete)
water feature meditation ness
groove factor
education (look son, no dirt)
bell siphons (way cool)
endless potential for tinkering, invention, and general beer drinking shed work
connection with the universe (I eat, therefore I Dioscorea)
general feeling of social superiority
chick pulling power (not so relevant or even tested really (I'm a middle aged married guy), but could still be a selling point to some)

So... my vote goes very strongly on the yep side.

And my new protein source might be escargot so I can add "cant get my species of protein fresh around these parts"

And also, If I had all the fish I could eat, I wouldn't be able to walk to the shop coz I'd be too full, so would need a no dig, no bending over, waste high veggie garden to balance out all my fish eating.

I could eat a lot of fish.

I'd love to see how you get on with a worm powered version of the same.

I totally hear you on the tinkering point. I am a tinkerer. I get depressed when I don't have anything to do. That for me is an appeal to AP over dirt. Which is why the next dirt bed will probably be a wicking bed - more fun to think about (although still v. easy) ahead of time.

Right now, I can have neither dirt nor AP (live in a tiny highrise in HK) which is why I am depressed most days. I had just started a tiny AP in Dubai before we had to move - probably only going 2 months - but in the middle of summer so saw very little growth (its like a million degrees in the shade - winter is really the growing season there). So, I am fantasizing about my next set up. Is that a bit sad that my fantasies revolve around plants?

Anyway, if I move where I think I will move next, then I will have an unlimited supply of fish so I need to think about AP without the fish side of the economics.

You planing a move to Tokyo Sea Life Park or sommit?

There's no reason you cant do aquaponics with a cow or whatever other protein floats your boat.

cowponics.

Thats a thing you know.

Just nobody knows about it

Now that's simply not true.

Get two used yoghurt containers, some marbles and an ikea lamp.

With the correct paperwork/bribes, you can take your pooponics system through customs, anywhere in the world.

If your dirt is sand with nothing in it but moles and has no ability to hold anything for more than 5 seconds and requires watering every half hour then AP makes sense. That's why I did it. The fish are a bonus. If you don't need eating fish just go with koi. Besides AP is much more fun than dirt and weeds are a bad memory, and it is not so back breaking with tilling soil etc.

Don't forget the teeny tiny pump and the teeny tiny syphon Bullwinkle.

BullwinkleII, crustaceans aren't fish...