Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I will start this thread to chronicle my journey in AP. My goals in AP are many: feed my friends delicious salad, raise beautiful Koi fish, enhance our surroundings, recycle reduce and reuse materials destined for the landfill, and educate myself in an exciting twist on agriculture while I discover my role here on the planet. Those very ideas have been a major motivator in my academic career. The term 'aquaponics' came to my ear in 2005 and it sounded rad. I thought it was a great idea for a place with abundant water but was not convinced it could be done in the Sonoran Desert. So AP was placed in the non priority file part of my brain. Instead, I went for water harvesting methods and in-ground planting of local native seeds, mainly the three sisters, corn beans and squash. The methods I learned and employed work, but much of the land here is so badly salted from previous agriculture that in ground growing cant be done, and most good soils are thin and cant be planted without intense labor to break through the caliche (lithified calcium carbonate layer). I continued gardening and reading, and dreaming about desert rains. The idea of aquaponics came up again through an encounter with Max of Mendocino Ecological Learning Center. His descriptions of aquaponics being water conservative and bountiful changed my idea of agricultural possibilities in the desert. I read about it, attended courses at the University of Arizona in aquaculture and arid land resources, and read through thousands of posts here on the Backyard Aquaponics forum. Now I am here to give back to you guys and open up the pages in my book of experiences and advancements in AP.

The first AP system I worked on was at Manzo Elementary School in Barrio Hollywood, West Tucson. It is a Food Forever system that the school was granted funding for, thanks to Moses Thompson and others. The system is stocked with a hundred or so Tilapia and the plants were first grown inside a class room under lights, but now the system is outside in a classy glass green house. I checked water quality and monitored plant health for two semesters. Seeing first hand that the AP systems can work I gathered information and some locally available used materials. Murray Hallams videos, this forum and the IBC of aquaponics were my main sources of knowledge.

I drew up my first system design and placed it in a suitable spot in the backyard of my South Tucson adobe abode. The system began with a single IBC, used flooring from the side of the road and some plumbing parts. The system was cycled with urine before adding the fish. It was first stocked with 11 koi fish of varying size and one plecostomus in the cut bottom of the IBC a 180 gallon (~680 liter) fish tank. The fish tank is located directly beneath the grow bed. The photos of the system show growth in the first two months. The first growing season was fall and yet we still harvested many melons, okra, mint, tobacco, corn and tepary beans.

The pump for the system was purposely oversized to accommodate for future expansion (more grow beds).

All looks and sounds good to me .. welcome to the forum gbock....

After a full season of growth I began making new prototypes with cut up pallets and billboard vinyl. A mini system and a tiered two bed system were produced. The tiered system resides at Keseva's Red Ashram on Kelso just west of First Ave. The entire back yard has been fully converted to gardens and the AP system has been churning out salads for his group dinners. The system was designed and placed to cover a large useless tilted concrete slab, and utilize locally sourced scrap wood and materials. Kesheva oversaw the aesthetic design of the build and he is happy with the results.

Kesheva's system at the Red Ashram is coming along nicely. The construction portion of the project being completed, we may now focus all of our attention on water quality, fish / plant health, and the overall biological robustness. The next piece of the puzzle is to add worms (Eisenia fetida) to the system now that fish are producing a healthy amount of wastes. I have waited on the addition of our soft bodied allies so that they will have plenty of fish wastes to consume once they are placed inside of the grow beds.

The plants in the Red Ashram AP system are doing very well.

What an interesting story. Great system you have there.

I have finished the construction of an aquaponic rabbit hutch / fish food / worm factory. The raised grow bed is currently hosting duck weed, pond snails, and mosquito fish. Beneath the high grow bed are the rabbits, and beneath the rabbits a rich bed awaits more of our soft bodied allies, the red composting worm Eisenia fetida.

Okay, now that the multi storied AP rabbit hutch is done, I have fixed up the shade structure for the veggie grow bed. I am so happy with the way it came out. And even the humming birds are happy about it too. This morning and evening I witnessed them drinking from the over flow of the mini system's spigot.

Thanks for looking Charlie.

Curious if your evaporation rates validate aquaponics as being designaed as a water saving method of agriculture?

Well in my case I went into aquaponics because I dislike having to water the garden every day. You would think that in contrast to watering shallowly on the soil every night/morning you would be saving more with aquaponics. Or is it that the rocks heat up and evap occurs quicker?

Great conversion from nothing to extreme production in a small space, love the use of pallets too. Will you add chickens, quail, ducks or geese to the production area? Pleaae contnue to keep us posted.

I have taken great care to design systems with minimal evaporative losses. The orientation to north, the placement of fish tank in ground below grow bed, and the use of continuous flow through standpipe all work to keep losses to a minimum. The orientation to north was determined knowing full well of the desert belt latitude where i reside near 32 north, I have assured that only morning light reaches into the fish tank and the long axis of whole system is faced east to west to allow for maximum solar exposure in winter and minimal exposure in summer. The continuous flow through standpipe keeps the water temp down during hot summer days, by not allowing hot air to enter into the beds as would occur in an ebb and flow type system. The standpipe is set to keep the water level below the surface of the red scoria grow medium, which prevents direct solar heating and buffers the water from the hot and dry desert air. The absence of competing weeds at the raised AP plant bed lowers evapotranspiration losses as compared to in ground gardening. I will start measuring my consumption vs equal area soil garden to give exact values, but my estimate is aquaponics at 1/5 consumption of traditional garden plus the added bonus of gorgeous fish.

The duckweed bed above the rabbits is looking great. Here is a close up pic of the standpipe which excludes the floating plants from the outflow.