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Comment by Jacques L. on January 16, 2014 at 10:12am

@Dr George

Ooooh! Maaaaaaggiiiiiiiie's. Now there's someplace I gotta visit!

Been to Rhiba's farm (version 1, not version 2) and was blown away by his system.

Looks as though this one won't disappoint as well (except for the commute) ;)

Definitely be looking to hit their tour in the next coupla months!

Comment by Jacques L. on January 16, 2014 at 9:49am

@Kim

I concur with John. Best bang for your buck is patience and use of reclaimed lumber.

Some items you cannot get around like liner and PVC plumbing, but you can shop around online for a good price, you can also just send out a distress call to others in the AP community and see if they have any materials to spare from their own system builds.

The outdoor system I built relied heavily on an old shed that I tore down and re-purposed to build my tank and grow beds. Saved me a chunk of change ;)

As for the return on investment, let me just say, that my system has provided me more than monetary compensation. There's nothing like growing your own food and AP makes it so easy once you get past your setup stage.

The wife is currently taking a stab at growing Quinoa and we're already seeing the seeds we planted germinating after less than a weeks time!

Comment by John Malone on January 16, 2014 at 9:35am

@Kim Romen 

The easiest, and fairly inexpensive, thing to do to extend your system is to build your own growbeds.  Most of my growbeds are made from recycled / salvaged lumber.   The things you'll need to buy are screws, pond liner, plumbing, and concrete blocks to rest it on.  Of those the pond liner is the most expensive at about $50 per 8'x4' growbed.

But if you're not in a hurry, don't mind scrounging around, and are reasonably handy with tools, you can make your system go a lot further.

One of the things I've learnt, is that you don't need many fish to supply enough fertilizer for a very large growing area.  I would wager that most people drastically overstock their systems with fish and don't have enough veggies.   

Comment by Kim Romen on January 16, 2014 at 8:49am

Dr. Brooks, prob for me is I want to build on to the system but don't want to throw money out the door.  I'm glad I took the plunge with the craigslist system I bought but now I need to slow down and figure how I can do this more cost effectively.  I'm already hooked so how do I do the best with what we have is very important to me.  Blew through our $50k savings in the last 2 years that my son was diagnosed with autism.  Took many years to save that money!  I'm partially doing this as an investment as a lot of the money was spent on our boys' gluten free, casein free, everything free organic diets, along as it was time for me to take some time for myself to do something I'd love, but I can justify throwing more money into it only if I believe I'll make the money back.  For now I'm enjoying it, it's hard to stop tho! 

Comment by Dr. George B. Brooks, Jr. on January 16, 2014 at 8:08am

Hi Kim. Working on the numbers. Keep thinking but keep doing. Don't get caught in Analysis Paralyses 

Comment by Kim Romen on January 15, 2014 at 12:59pm

Dr. Brooks, Thankyou for your reply.  Have you done a mathematical comparison on your system with growing seasonally as you do now and needing to buy fish each season, factoring in the benefit of eating the fish each season verses heating a system and keeping the fish around year long so they breed and populate themselves?  Or maybe I'm thinking too much. :)

Comment by Kim Romen on January 15, 2014 at 12:56pm

John , thankyou.  that reminds me I should plant some seeds in my system to fill in any gaps and continue to experiment.  I just got a greenhouse tower for seedstarting for $23 at Harbor Freight.  I think I'll start slow and not invest too much in lights as I've failed each time I've tried to grow from seed and I don't care for the 2d step honestly.  I'm hoping to have a shift in my attitude if I am successful with it!

Comment by Dr. George B. Brooks, Jr. on January 14, 2014 at 11:20pm

This past Saturday January 11, 2014 I had the pleasure of visiting Maggie’s Farm (http://bit.ly/1cXVDvE) as part of a tour hosted by the Tucson Aquaponics Project (http://bit.ly/1gCgUf7) and led by Casey Townsend (the guy in the big hat) the driving force behind the project. At 3,000 ft2 and about 40,000 lbs in annual production Maggie’s Farm is the largest aquaponics facility in Arizona. My thanks to Casey and the Project for the tour. The following are a few photos from the visit. Enjoy.



P.S. The facility uses Deep Water Culture beds 48 feet long, 4 feet 3 inches wide and about 16 inches deep.

P.P.S.S. This facility was modeled after our local Rhiba Farms and Mark Rhine did much of the consulting on the project. 

Group outside greenhouse

Fish tanks

Biofilters

My wife and fellow aquapon Angela next to grow beds of lettuce.

Casey lifts a raft of lettuce.

Air pumps foreground, water pumps background.

Eight foot deep sump tanks.

Comment by Dr. George B. Brooks, Jr. on January 14, 2014 at 11:01pm

Hi Kim. You wrote "Dr. Brooks, thx for the info!  If u don't mind sharing, what kind of fish do u have or/and is your tank in the ground or large?  I'm curious as to how you are able to get away without heating or insulating.  Thankyou."

The answer is we don't. The mission is to develop seasonal cropping schedules. We pull the tilapia when the water gets cold and replace them with feeder goldfish. When the weather gets warm we restock the tilapia. Our preference however would be to have at lease one tank of catfish. They are cold tolerant. 

Comment by John Malone on January 14, 2014 at 8:05pm

@Kim Romen  I will be thinning the lettuce once they get going, although I always find it a big shame to do so.   I haven't done well on this in the past and the plants don't do as well because of it.  Having said that, I'll leave them closer than I would in a dirt garden because they aren't competing for nutrients.

I've tried all sorts of different ways of propagating seeds: in plastic bags, in jiffy pots, in seedling trays, in lava rock in seedling trays, etc, etc.   Quite frankly, I can't be bothered any more since I have as good, or better, success just putting them directly in the gravel/lava rock.

Small seeds I scatter over the rock and spray in with water from the hose.

Larger seeds I put just below the surface of the media, not so deep that they have to move rocks to grow, but out of sight (just).  

It seems to work pretty well.

The only seed that I consistently have problems with is peppers.  They are my Achilles heel.  I can't grow peppers from seed no matter what I do.  Herbs either. Pretty much everything else I've tried has grown.  

Successes: tomato, squash, watermelon, radish, peas, beans, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, zucchini, leeks, spring onions, bok choi, fennel.

Notable failures: herbs, peppers.  And I'm willing to bet that most other people have no problem with herbs and peppers:  it's just me.

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