Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

It seems that no one in the world cares about water. they are making their billions on RO tech and selling it back to us. 90+% of it is polluted here. Not even suitable for plants or live stock. When are they going to learn? Most every drain, commercial or residential goes to a stream, to a river, to the sea. I did see that they are starting to build some sewage plants finally. We are getting one at the end of our stream just before it gets dumped into the river. I am not 100% sure what they will do with the 5 miles of streams that feed it. On one new construction site the boss had to pay a few extra million dollars to split up all of the sewage and rain water into 2 separate pipes. When finished they both dumped into the same stream. Maybe it's for some future plans. One can only hope but it has been over ten years and nothing yet.

Look at Mt Shasta. Its snow cover is polluted to 40,000 times the acceptable level. No one should drink that water anymore. No factories up there, all Chem droppings. All over the world people like us are slowly being forced to grow indoors. At some point in time, maybe less then 20 years there will no longer be farms outside. All the land will be sold for a penny on a dollar and the big boys will develop it for what they want. At that point in time the price of water goes up and they will trade it on the stock market. Water wars will start. We are not in for a great liquid future and we all live on a planet that is 75% water.

I don't think any of us are here for the cost savings. Heck, greens are the least cost of my food bill but they are also the easiest way to get contaminated with heavy metals and other things. So is drinking the water. By the looks of all the money that is spent here from the members, I don't think they care about the price of greens either. IMHO I think we are all worried about the same thing and are acting on that fear. It is a real fear and not some stupid conspiracy theory. So what I see so far on sites like this, is where the smarter folks hang out. They are smart enough to really see what is really going on and acting on it.

If you are new and reading this and waiting for big brother to give you clean water and veggies, you have a long wait. Even if you can just go one over one and grow one crop, get 9 friends to do the same with different crops and trade crops at harvest time for free. Good Luck
Thanks Mr. water,
D

Wow
Dr David Suzuki is presently in Australia doing a series of talks. I just was listening to him on the Radio {JJJ} before reading your post.
It all seems dome & gloom for the planet. Climate change, water pollution, acidification of the oceans etc.
Some might say it too late already !
All we can do as individuals is reduce our footprint on the planet & try to leave it in a better state, that's what I'm trying to do & teach-encourage my kids to do the same.!

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GTK
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=26139

Thanks for your input gtkmarine and that's one nice catch you got in your photo or is it from your AP tanks. One can only dream. But one line in your post.


So I started to wonder how AP can change this, so let me ramble on a bit. A year ago I was doing research on energy and found out what was the number one consumer in the USA and most likely a lot of other countries including here. I thought it would be Jet airline traffic for sure. One plane uses more power to take off then I do in a year in my car. But it was not number 1. Trains were. One of the trains reasons were moving veggies to market. So this is where we come in. Instead of getting veggies from 3,000 miles away we need to step into the next room and pick what you want to eat. In new homes have a AP room with a built in green house as standard. So I see this as an opportunity to change housing construction also. Why not? Years ago toilets were outside, now they are inside. Gardens are next.

When ever I get this all figured out and up and running I think I will design a nice AP style home and see how it flies. Think of it as a big pantry for food. After all, who wants to walk out to the green house in their PJs at 10C to get some food.

The city next to us has about 3 million mouths to feed, Think of all the truck traffic each morning. Then what about the hundred cities with each having over 100 million people. I went to one of them and there are massive veggie trucks entering 24 hours a day non stop. I never saw what came in by train or plane or boat. We can help remove all of this waste all over the world. We need our kids help. They will be taking over this mess we left them. I have also started trying to teach my kid and his friends when I can. Some of them are now growing seeds also. They really need to know they can do this!
D

Thanks Deuem
The fish in the avatar is a wild caught Samson fish

That's a surprise I would have thought that trains would be very economical.
A total integrated housing solution would be the holly grail for future populations. Things like Aquaponics garden, solar power, rainwater tanks, composting toilets, grey water recycling- the list goes on. I did a lot of research on permaculture when I was younger & still try to use these practises when ever possible, but have found it impractical to stick to them in this small town. Buying locally & reducing the amount of food miles is a big one.
In a city of 100 million !!! That's more than the whole population of Australia.

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GTK
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=26139

I've never heard of a Samson fish. There are 2 impressive things in that photo. #1) the size of the fish. #2) The fact that you can lift it that high. Strong man photo.

I was also surprised about the trains. Yeah they are really economical per pound, per mile. It is the fact that there are so many running 24/7. Hundreds of miles of trains moving all the time, gulping diesel oil. Some are so long it takes 20 minutes to pass you. American people have just about given up on train rides. They drive or fly. While in China it is common to see several thousand on one train at a time at New Years. Not to mention how far we are behind in train design.

I rode on the Chinese high speed trains and it was so comfortable I didn't even know we were moving at 300KPH. Smooth ride, just don't look out the window, it will get you a bit sick things passing by so fast. It becomes a blur. I never felt them start, never felt them accelerate and never felt them stop. No noise. Simply first class. Our trains jerk when starting, you feel acceleration and also deceleration and when they stop they all clunk together. You hear every click clack of the rails, you feel bumps and turns. Very noisy and hard to go from car to car.

So a total integrated housing unit sounds good. I will open a new note book and start adding in ideas. Done! Maybe we should open a new thread, The Ultimate AP home or Permaculture living. That was coined by two guys in Australia by the way. Think of a good name.

Deuem

You guys have seen the stuff built by the sometimes controversial Michael Reynolds and his Earthship homes?

01:11 - Growbeds
01:36 - Tilapia Tank
02:15 - Solids Removal
05:00 - Greenhouse
08:33 - Harvest
10:00 - Plumbing




I stumbled upon this guy a few years ago -- there are a lot of videos and information online. I know one of our forum members has mentioned building / living in an Earthship inspired home. I'd like to incorporate many of the ideas you'll find him using, but I doubt I'd build with tires and other non-inert trash. The embedded bottles are neat.

Funny "indigenousness" remarks regarding tires and beer cans...


I'm betting on technological advances providing essentially free energy and then everybody will have everything they need and all that ensues... Who knows when that will happen, but I'm an optimist.

--
Sam

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Jardín Acuaponía #1

That's an interesting video, Thanks.

Did you hear the fish go nuts when he walked by. Yes there are fish in there. How big and how many are in question but they are there. I liked the green house on the front. Makes a nice indoor porch+

Deuem

I think the tires and trash make it more interesting but they do add a lot of labor in order to save cost. Spraying concrete would probably give you the thermal mass and be a lot easier (might be an environmental cost I don't know about)
https://www.google.com/search?q=spray+concrete+dome&biw=1920&bih=957&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiIupGh6bbLAhVByWMKHZ3vAoAQsAQILQ.

The setup reminds me of the Chinese solar greenhouses because of the large thermal mass at the back to hold heat.
https://energyfarms.wordpress.com/2010/04/05/solar-greenhouses-chinese-style/

To find tires in a village that is poor is impossible, maybe bike tires. Once a group can afford a car and tires there is no way you are going to get them to pack tires for free or a low cost. One would have to ship tires to them. Most places won't let you ship in garbage anymore, they have enough of it to deal with on their own.

I liked most of it but I would not want any gray water coming to the toilet. On one of the vids, the guy said, don't mind the smell, you will get used to it. Great! So drop the water usage from 4 times to 3 for me. We get more then 9 inches of rain a year. These Star Wars type houses might look good way out in the desert but what about in the city or suburbs?

If any one used bleach in that system it should would set off a chain reaction of death to everything. I felt like I was being shown all of the advantages and none of the weaknesses. One the wife hated was the fact it was designed so if you left it for a day you had to close it all up or the rain would flood your house out. I have to admit they did a poor job on ventilation. I would have to close it up everyday. And who is going to leave both doors wide open while we are away. The design has a lot of bugs to work out.

As far as that Chinese Greenhouse, I have never seen one like that yet. Most of them look like standard green houses with glass panes.
D

Test 2:

Due to viewing many of your grow beds with lights. I took my test 2 apart and changed the light from a fixed height to a variable one. The light can move up and down now from touching to a half meter high. All in PVC and it worked well. I still have a few more minor modifications to go and I am waiting for the pump to be delivered.

Deuem

Well, we got our clean the water machine in and it is not really a RO unit. It is some kind of 10 stage filter unit with a back flush on it. It is more meant for those little faucets people have on the sinks for drinking water. It will do 1 liter of water every 1.25 minutes so I have a 4 hour fill on my fish tank. The good part is that I won't have to lug the water. I just run a 10 meter drinking water hose and wait. Lugging the well water took me 2 days to fill it last time so I guess 4 hours of just waiting is a step up.

At this moment the fish have been in this water from the day we got it and they have not died yet and it has been more then 3 days. We are also drinking it and no one seems to have gotten ill yet. It comes out crystal clear and has good taste and PH neutral at 7. It will change the water down or up to 7 somehow. Our tap water is just a bit over 7 to start with so I guess it does not have to work very hard on Ph. This machine has 8 filters and 2 of them are double purpose. Giving 10 in the end.

As long as the fish don't die, I feel better and not afraid of drinking it. I am still interested in getting a house hold RO unit for all of our water. I need to save a few big bucks for that one. I'll put it on the Christmas list. Right now the Fish tank is bone dry and the room is a complete mess but that is part of the life of having fish. Now, if I can remember where all the parts go, I will be OK. lol One good thing, I got to move it 1/2 inch while empty.

If I had a Fish Room I would install one of these as a replacement water cleaner and run it on a float valve. I thought I had clean well water until I did that water change and they died. One other benefit was that we found it thru one of the companies my wife reps, so we sell them and really didn't know it. It was a secondary line for them. So we bought it from ourselves. It was about 150+USD. The house RO units are upwards of 777USD plus installation and parts. And my huge water bill should then double from 3USD a month to 6USD.

The lesson I take away is that I can no longer trust any water. I must take the extra step myself. Just imagine what must be in the plants.

SEEDS:

I grabbed some seed guts from a Pumpkin Squash we had for dinner and split it to 3 cups. They are all growing well. No cup failures yet. All about 1 inch. Planted from garbage. The headed for the garbage sliced tomatoes all grew 100% also. Next I will try bananas, apples and strawberries. Slice and plant.

SEEDS:

When I saw the man on YT slice a tomato and plant it. I first thought it might be some kind of trick and that he changed out the final cup for the seedlings. This approach for me works 100%. They always grow and some of you need to try it also. I call it garbage farming because that is where the tomatoes were. Even the Cherry Tomatoes are working this way. Nice re-cycle of garbage. We always seem to end up with 1 or 2 we didn't eat and gets tossed out.

This will also work out nice for seeds from veggies or fruit we can't buy here but the produce gets shipped in from other countries.

Update: We went mountain shrimping again and found a place we can catch wild fingerlings. I have no idea what they are yet. They have a red stripe down the side of them and they are silver and green. But we were surprised to catch them at all. Since we were out for shrimp we didn't bring the portable pump and we lost about half before we could get them home. Next time the battery pump goes with us for sure. Got them out and ready now. So we caught 40 fingerlings and 6 shrimp today. Got all the shrimp home and 20 + of the fish. Big sorry to the fish gods. We never expected to get even 1 where we were.

Ooh, they sound pretty! Pics?

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Redcap Builds A System