Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello everybody. I am DeadlyFoez. I am quite known around the net for many different things that I indulge in for my hobbies from plants to computers, security researching to trolling.

I started with growing around 15 years ago, and I have been off and on since then. My biggest accomplishment with growing was my "Super Intelligent C24 Grow Cab", (google it if you want) that featured DWC, Growtronix system, and many of my hand build ideas. My cabinet was used mostly for fun and topic of conversation. I experimented with LED's before anyone commercially manufactured them. Sadly, even those that are commercially manufactured do not include many aspects of my research and do fall short of what my intentions where for the perfect LED system.

I have grown many things hydroponically including sunflowers, catnip, cherry tomatoes (was great ammo for my now retired potato cannon), plus many other random plants that seemed fun at the time. I mostly did it just for the hobby.

Now I have a family of 8 and I am the stay at home dad and I want to utilize my free time with taking my hobby and turning it into food for my family. Sadly, no one in this house will eat fish... although I will try it with what I farm once I learn how to properly prepare fish.

Well, I am kinda unsure where to start right now. I have just acquired 2x 275 gallon IBC totes. They were used to hold and transfer sodium alkyl ether sulfate. I know I need to clean these out rather well, especially being that they are likely not food grade totes. I really don't want to hear anyone tell me of the risks of using it and all of that, I am already aware and at this moment I am just going to use them for experiments. Plus, my wife can help me clean these to the best of all abilities.

My wife happens to be (almost) a bio pharmaceutical engineer and she has a lot of great knowledge. Although she at first was not too interested in what I was doing with my makeshift hydroponics system, she has shown a lot more interest lately and hopefully I can reel her in on using her knowledge to help me make something great. As I have talked with her about grafting plants and culturing cells, my wife has shown that it may be something that she would have fun using her expertise with.

In the past when I was starting to grow, so many people were upset that I wasn't growing the devil's lettuce because I had such a well thought out setup and I have people urging me to do it all the time, but I wont. I want good home grown food.

Well, thank you for taking the time to read my introduction and if you have any thoughts or ideas for me then I will happily listen to them. Thank you.

P.S. I may add more to this first post later about the ideas that I have for this system that I want to create.

Jajaja... I had to look that up.

I'm sure much of the "smarts" you had in your grow cabinet could be useful in aquaponics. There are many folks using not traditionally eaten fish in their aquaponics systems -- Koi or goldfish, for example.

Good luck on your new adventure!

--
Sam

If you grow devils lettuce you might have to grow more produce to cover the munchies.

Welcome and good luck with your system.