I thought everyone would like to see the growth of the plants in the 300 gallon aquaponics system over the past 18 days. It’s looking pretty good now that I’ve added some netting to keep the neighbor chickens from eating the seedlings.
I’ve adjusted some things so that the aquaponics system is now operating constant flood and I topped up the water since a 300 gallon tank can’t provide enough water to flood all 600 gallons of grow bed and still have enough water to keep big fish happy.
There are now 4 channel catfish from the big system testing the water which has cleared up nicely. It seems odd how a tank with no fish won’t clear as fast as a tank with a few fish. But now the water is quite clear through it is still tricky to get a picture of the fish.
Next step I need to learn more about web cams and how best to use them for aquaponics system monitoring. Stay tuned for the 300 gallon aquaponics system web cam and the big system web cam. But don’t hold your breath as I haven’t bought the equipment yet.
Anyway, now we are getting some nice sunny days I expect the veggies to really take off and hopefully make up for the cold we had that killed the fish. I don’t want a greenhouse for most things really. It is just the occasional really cold night that sets things back here. I actually prefer many of the cold weather veggies and those just don’t do so well in a greenhouse here since a sunny day in a greenhouse will set them back while most single wall unheated greenhouses here will still get to cold to keep tropical plants happy. So on goes my first winter without greenhouses and I expect the 300 gallon aquaponics system to make it through the rest of the winter fine.
Doesnt the energy used to have an operation like this outweigh the production savings?
That little 300 gallon system used less than 100 watts for the air and water pumps. Does that outweigh the cost of produce, I suppose that depends on if you are measuring it against buying super fresh local and (you know exactly what has been sprayed on it) produce or if you are measuring against buying the cheapest food like products out there. People don’t do aquaponics because it is cheap, they do it because they like the hobby and gardening in a fashion that also grow fish and is an automatically watered/fertilized garden because you have the fish. It is growing more food for every drop of water and making sure you are not polluting the environment at the same time.
There are definitely cheaper ways to grow food but most of them are not very “automated”.