Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Interestingly Ems.... a product often added to hydro applications is "Microbial"..... as in HERE

Not sure I fully agree with all the sales blurb though

Edited :

Would tend to think that this could be used to help startup cycle in a new system

The question is 'what do the fish add?'. Say I'm vegetarian. I could avoid a bunch of issues by not growing fish (animal husbandry, avoidance of all pesticides etc); but this is worse (according to HP vs AP thread).

The fish don't add bacteria, they don't add any nutrients we can't add directly.

So why?

(One glib response is "well just use AP then", but to do so would be missing an opportunity to understand the whys, and hence potentially improve things. Without understanding we are limited to stochastic search, the third best way to solve any problem

It's those things that can't be quantified that make AP so good...

I know where you are coming from NJH but I know I've frustrated a couple of people when I asked series of questions on the same topic (sorry ).

Thing is I just don't think that we know enough aobut the complex interactions. For most of biology (if not all) we are still pointing at things and saying isn't that cool (compared withs physics or chemistry although there still a bit of that going on in those disciplines) rather than understanding what is actually going on.

I'm more interested in working out what the optimum AP processes and procedures are, then understanding why and then making the comparison with other systems. Until we know at what works best trying to understand how or why it works best will be beyond us.

As to what the fish add. They add another level of productivity. You could leave them out and just have a tank that you dumped stuff in. As long as the stuff and water within the tank didn't go anaerobic it would probably work just as well.

Why were they frustrated? Because we didn't find an answer? What questions should we ask to get closer to the truth?



Past experience is that by understanding processes we suddenly made a great leap forward. We could try to improve things by tinkering, but someone else will come along, and work out what's going on, and they'll get the nobel prize and make all the money selling their thing.

For example, it wasn't until people really understand what went on with water engines that we went from 5% efficient turbines to 50% efficient turbines.

It was claimed elsewhere that HP was outperformed by AP. Do the fish stop the system going bad perhaps? Seems dubious though



Sounds like religion...

It is sometimes claimed that AP mimics nature, but in fact the connection to natural cycles seems tenuous - most creek water runs out to sea, and there aren't banks of gravel periodically washed with creek water with plants growing in them. So the idea isn't actually very natural - yet it works (or so we claim).

How did someone get this idea? Was it by understanding the fact that the problem for fish was the build up of nutrients in the water, and the difficulty of growing plants in water was the lack of nutrients, and that these two could be linked together?

That sounds to me like improvement driven by understanding. Are there any examples of AP predating the development of closed aquaculture and hydroponics?

American Indians would drop a dead fish into each hole as they planted their corn. (OK, so that's not AP.)

How about things like predecessors to permaculture? Especially the use of combinations of fish and ducks in rice paddies.

Ancient Egyptians taking advantage of the flooding of the Nile?

I think people have understood for a long time that animal wastes would improve plant growth. I have difficulty coming up with examples of ancient AP, but there has been understanding of at least half of the equation for centuries.

*now Paul, stop that* did it with zero imported nutrients Stuart, simply by never breaking the soil. The effect of which is that the soil biota never need to 'recharge' - because its never been disturbed. He had better yields than any equivalent producer and did so for decades.

On a lesser level, rotation beds never need to be fallow, they just need the correct rotation...fruit-root-legume-leaf-green manure...but typically they need inputs (though in a good Permaculture type system these can all be gained from onsite sources).

It all depends how you 'produce.'

Trace elements are only needed in very minute amounts.

Not so sure I agree with you there NJH....

What about reed beds, mangroves,etc.... coming from NZ I can certainly attest to many many rock,stone,gravel filled creeks, streams and rivers....

Look at the clarity and purity of mountain streams .... perhaps the plant life is more aligned along the banks rather than in the actual water flow, although if you think about it , how much microbiological growth exists within the creeks/creek beds??

I would have thought in fact that these "natural" systems were in fact "living" proof??

I thought someone was swearing at me

Fascinating guy but another [s]book[/s] series of books to put on the wish list.
[hr]

Essentially fallow is a crop of grass and stuff to feed livestock. Its still used just not for intensive cropping.

As for historical forms of AP I think by the generally excepted definition of this site they only may have occured in the form of pond systems of Asia.

I think europe may have had some form of flow through systems that I might call AP but any sort of recirculating system would be tricky with out reliable pumping technology.

NJH post about taking the fish out got me thinking along another line. I've seen posts where people talk about shading tanks and keeping water levels below the top of the medium in grow beds to reduce algal growth.

Other than asthetic reasons why is algal growth a bad thing?

From the BSF we know that algae are unltimately the organism for producing many essential nutrients (omega 3's and 6's for example) which then bioaccumulate up the food chain to be eaten by us the health concious.

In a AP system that incorporated algae growth the algae would grow, be eaten by something which would then be fed to our fish (unless you have tilapia) to be eaten by us

So the idea of having a tank to just chuck stuff into and create a soup might not be so silly. If such a tank were above the FT and had a big (drain 2" of bigger) water be be preriodically flushed into the fish tank along with a whole stack of food cweetrues to give the fish an excellent variation in their diet.

How does that sound?

fruit-root-legume-leaf-green manure..
That is a key which I am sure can be applied to AP.
C1

Tentatively entering discussion.........

As a farmer, I was drawn to AP because it doesn't disturb the soil, is almost closed system and has no offtakes that can't be re created by the system.

This history of agriculture mostly isn't a happy picture of land and people live happily ever after. Often, and mostly, agricultural areas become very degraded and this fact has caused the collapse of many civilisations. Now we (supposedly) know more about land management and agricultural procuction than ever before, and we're often still making a mess of it.

I look for answers in biomimicry, and I believe that aquaponics is biomimicry in a fantasticly useable form. Most creek beds are filled with gravel, most streams run under ground when the surface water has dried up. Plants run the ecosystem. Bare and disturbed earth causes problems which nature tries to fix with weeds, lower order plants that pave the way for more productive plants.

Every day my task is to turn plants into money. When I saw aquaponics light bulbs went off and I was in, because this system has far more potential to be sustainably productive than any form of agriculture that I know of. I'd like to think that one day no land will be ploughed.

Ok off my soap box now, back out and count the yabbys....

G'night
Chrissy

It seems to me that the major problem with most AP is the need for the use of high value feed. Using high energy feed when sunlight is available for use is unnecessary in the permaculture spirit that I find attractive about AP.
This is why I think that the idea that SC mentioned about algae soup is a great idea. The aquaculture industry often uses pond fertilization, with manure for example. This being especially effective for filter feeding and herbivorous fishes like tilapia. For AP I am picturing sort of a compost tank left in the sun, kitchen scraps can be tossed in the tank and allowed to decompose, the water is oxygenated to maintain a happy aerobic environment. The product from the tank is green-water for the feeding tilapia, or add a daphnia culture and use it to feed insectivorous fish. This takes the bio-mimicry of AP even further, and further closes the open end of the loop, the feed source.

*i'm done lurking

Hi Effigy.... you've been in the shadows for a long time.....

Welcome to the light....and the mad world of AP......you're part of an ever increasing movement, especially there in the US

Your ideas and contributions are and will be welcomed....

Feel free to ask questions

What about running worm composting bins and feeding some of the worms to the fish?

AP lettuce -> salad -> salad scraps -> worm food -> fish food -> AP lettuce

Nice little cycle