Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Look at 2:46. I'm thinking a blower, but lots of smaller pumps. Pluses: Problems are contained to 1 "section" at at a time. Not sure about costs vs. single pump. 10,000 plants per day in 80,000 sq ft GH. Seems pretty good.

I think you forgot to include a link....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq_xS0rYbD0

That would help.

They did mention they planned to expand in 5,000 square foot increments - my assumption would be that each 5,000 foot section is it's own system. Not a horrible idea, but if they're running 90,000 square feet, that's 18 separate systems. Running water tests must be quite the undertaking.

That video bugs me though. Here are a few reasons:
1) Do you have to touch the fish so much? Every time you net a fish - and especially if you touch it - you're stressing it.
2) Wow - no employees! Everybody working there is family, or an unpaid WWOOFer. (Willing Workers On Organic Farms)

smatthew, Good points. Those are the best employees. But, if they're working, they still have to be taking a salary??
i wonder if they delay the water tests from daily to 2-3x per week. Do 3-5 each day, and then it wouldn't require as much time. Also, if they had electronics for all, it wouldn't take as long. What did you think of the "mud bag"? It seems to me like using more traditional media instead of dirt/soil would be much more effective. Also, thought it strange that they would leave gaps in the DWC and media beds. In my experience, those areas will get stuck or sliced with something. Murphy's Law type scenario. Doesn't seem worth the savings in material to me.

look at .28. balancing along the 6" top board. Just a matter of time before he goes swimming.lol

Labor law for agriculture in the USA is interesting. It's very hard to find a way to get people to work without pay. So much so that farms can get in trouble if they have unpaid volunteers. Viridis looks to be using the two exceptions i know about.
WWOOFers work part of the day, and receive housing and food instead of pay. Family members don't have to be paid.

As far as testing goes - there's not too much that can be done to save labor. pH, Potassium and Calcium can be done with ion specific probes, but everything else requires wet chemistry and time.

Their "mud bag" is just a media bed, constructed out of dura-skrim. I'm sure it ends up rather "muddy" due to the buildup of solids, but i got the impression it had a media in it. Probably expanded shale.

As far as I know They are only operating as a hydro facility now and cut all aquaponic production (at least that's what I took away from the conference in Ca this year). Not an AP operation anymore (let go their main partner/operator). Also much of that video is all hydro just trying to be passed off as AP... Tricky tricky

The number of systems you have is a balance between risk management on the one hand and labour costs and economies of scale on the other.

You can build bigger systems that cost less $/m2 or $/kg of production which also take less work to operate but if a big system goes bad then you lose more fish at once. Generally your plants would be alright but you might have a dip in production.

I think the biggest thing to take from their video is not their system design but their marketing and video production skills. In many ways marketing skills are more important than farming skills.

I heard one of their tricks was that part of their system was set up as drain-to-waste hydro. They took that waste water (chock full of nutrients) and put it into their aquaponics systems. Claimed it was still organic - some loophole about any water suitable for watering crops is suitable for use in organic systems.....

If you notice in the video, John Parr is really interested in schools. His partner seems much more into producing produce. Seems to help explain the split-up.

If your interest is only growing fruit and veg, I'd imagine this one works well. I couldn't imagine you could stock many fish, the tanks were quite little.

If you want to make money off the fish as well, I don't think this system would work very well, you just can't stock as high.

But if you're not trying to make money off the fish, you may as well go hydro, it's simplier, less can go wrong, and you can get the nutrient profiles for the specific plants far easier.