AJ Grottke
36, Male
Orfordville, WI
United States
Profile Information:
- How did you find us?
- other
- Are you an aquaponic gardener already?
- Yes
- If so, what type of system? (pick all that apply)
- flood and drain media, raft, NFT, vertical, combination
- How old is your system?
- Just started
- What type of fish do you grow with? (select all that apply)
- Tilapia
- How big is your fish tank?
- 3 100gal
- Please tell us something else about yourself.
- I run a micro scale mushroom farm growing shiitake, lions mane, king oyster, and other mushroom varieties. I also love growing plants, and fish too(still alot to learn there). Im in the process of building a 250gal fish tank and 4x8 raft for an indoor system. I removed my old system and moving huge beds of hydroton was a pain in the ass, not to mention there were a crap load of bugs breeding in there. SO im ditching that stuff(ill use it for hydroponics) and going raft; we'll see. I moved my old system because i needed more space for mushrooms :)
Check out our website: www.lotusgrowingtech.com
Sylvia Bernstein
Welcome AJ,
Thanks for joining the Aquaponic Gardening community! I hope you find it a fun place to explore aquaponics. There is a real blend of experienced and new aquapons in this community, so please don’t hesitate to get in there and start asking questions. Everyone is quite happy to help out new members – no question is too basic.
A great place to start is to read the “How to Use This Site” link on the upper right corner, “Start Here” section of the Main page. You might also find the “Aquaponic Gardening Rules of Thumb” guidelines helpful.
Please add a photo of yourself and participate!
If you can afford it I would also appreciate a donation through the “Donate button” on the right side of the home page. This helps me with monthly site fees, but is NOT a requirement of membership. If you can contribute… great! If not…no worries.
Thanks again for joining us, and I look forward to getting to know you.
Sylvia
Dec 16, 2010
Nate Storey
Thanks for the comments on the display AJ- I was just looking at your website. Very cool. I grew mushrooms for a while, but being a perpetual renter means that I have never had the chance to get into it in a large-scale way. When I was living in China I toured a lot of mushroom farms in my area. It was amazing- they were using human waste from the sewage ditches to grow something, and all of the farmers were very poor- people who had nothing but access to the ditches- but they managed to carve out a life for themselves. It was one of the coolest things I experienced there.
How long have you guys been around?
Mar 19, 2011
Nate Storey
Mar 20, 2011
Nate Storey
Hey AJ,
Sorry about the late response. My greenhouse is small and I use all natural light. If you try to do commercial with artificial light you will lose money. the market trial is going awesome. People love it. We keep raising our prices and people buy more each week. We're charging pretty high prices now, but because we're not competing with any other hydro. prod.s we kind of have a unique market position.
We do heat our GH during the winter months. It's mostly off of a boiler, so it's not too bad. When we build our large commercial greenhouses they'll run off of outdoor furnaces primarily with backup heat.
Nate
Apr 4, 2011
Burton
Was looking for some detailed information on the moving bed filter and came across this, thought you would like to see it :)
http://www.koiphen.com/forums/showthread.php?119032-DIY-Moving-Bed-...
I am debating aerating my BG's since 10" of it will always be under water, so I am brain storming to get ideas.
Apr 8, 2011
Chi Ma
May 29, 2011