Comment

Comment by Tawnya Sawyer on March 21, 2012 at 11:38pm

For anyone interested in attending the Free World Water Day webinar thursday from 7:30-9pm MT or viewing it as a recording please email me at Tawnya@coloradoaquaponics.com so I can send you the login link. Thanks and hope to see you there. Enjoy your celebrations. 

Comment by Tom Cooley on March 21, 2012 at 7:34pm

June Stoyer of the Organic View radio show (over 1 million listeners globally) will have Suzanne Friend of Friendly aquaponics on her show tomorrow. Yay! http://www.blogtalkradio.com/theorganicview/2012/03/22/friendly-aqu...  

Comment by Sylvia Bernstein on March 21, 2012 at 7:11pm

Had a Permaculture class of about 18 certification students visit my greenhouse to chat about saving water for WWD 2012!  hard to see the Tee-shirt, but it is there!

Comment by Sylvia Bernstein on March 21, 2012 at 7:00pm

Be sure to record your event / activity with a photo or image and send them all to Rob Torcellini rtorcellini@bigelowbrook.com to be included in the video!

Here is a link to the UN program brochure and the live event in Rome - http://www.unwater.org/worldwaterday/romeevent.html

Comment by Jesse Hull on March 20, 2012 at 5:31pm

My friend Ryan and I converted the 50 gallon fish tank at a local nature center into an AP system yesterday.  I took some pictures, but now the center wants to create a sign to hang on the system.  

We'll get some more pics then to send to Rob T. 

Comment by TCLynx on March 20, 2012 at 5:30am

World Water Day is Thursday March 22nd.
[/caption]
I don't have time to prepare anything special but I'll be home to give tours and impromptu classes/lectures on what aquaponics is and how it works.
Contact me For address or if you need directions. You can pick your own fresh herbs and greens, it doesn't get fresher than that unless you buy a planted tower system to take home and harvest right before you eat.
I'm in Tangerine Florida, this map just shows the general area, it isn't pointing to my house.
View Larger Map

Comment by Sylvia Bernstein on March 20, 2012 at 4:09am

Great idea, Tom!  Given your "tweet-xpertise" I'll bet you can get some great buzz going.

My event is that I'm meeting with a permaculture class in my greenhouse Wednesday afternoon to talk about aquaponics and water conservation.  Just a few more days...anyone else?

Comment by Tom Cooley on March 19, 2012 at 10:19pm

My "event(s)" will be taking place online on Thursday; I'm the cohost of weekly Twitter chats on sustainability @ http://twebevent.com/sustainchat and I've registered as the host of http://twebevent.com/WorldWaterDay and http://twebevent.com/aquaponics as well. Between 5 and 6 PM EDT on Thursday, we'll attempt to get a substantive twitter conversation happening using both the hashtags #aquaponics and #WorldWaterDay in tweets. Anyone on Twitter who wants to join us at that time would be most welcome. Perhaps we can make an impression in the overall WWD tweetstream :)

Comment by TCLynx on March 11, 2012 at 9:14pm

Way to go Raychel!!!!!! (and the others who presented with you!!!!)

Comment by Meg Stout on March 11, 2012 at 8:39pm

Rachel, that's awesome!

Comment by Raychel A Watkins on March 11, 2012 at 8:24pm

Yesterday March 10 Chris Schup, Kate Scanlon, Kirsten Udd, Brian, and myself gave a class on "Economica Aquaponics" at the Board of Water Supply in Honolulu.  Chris had gotten in touch with BOW and arranged for this class.  They got all excited and said they usually had 20 people in their classes but if we took away the tables they could have 40.  They took away the tables 40 people came and they had to turn dow 15 people. We got excited then about the reception of the idea.  Dispite a flat tire and no spare that fit I got there on time.  People started flocking around and asking questions right away.  We had never practiced before but it came off smoothe as silk as far as I could tell.  Kate gave a short alk about World Water Day and Global and Local Food Production. Kirsten talk was "Introduction to aquaponics" just to give an overview of what and why of aquaponics.  I talk very briefly on Food Safety.  Then I built for them a very small economical aquaponic system.  The total cost of which did not exceed $ 50 or 60.  I used an old push cart we had found in the dumb for the base.  Someone gave me a 30 gal rubbermaid fish tank in the end I put in 5 small tilipia.  I made a bell siphon out of scraps of pipe I had arround.  I bought a small 28 dollar pump at the Navy Exchange and a cement tub from Home Depot $12. This was used as a grow bed.  I pointed out they could use it a s a trough with a raft floating or a grow bed with cinders.  I even taught them how to wash cinders in an onion bag.  That really saves water.  We poured in the cinders stuck in some plants to show variety.  Put the pump and pipes together turned it on and it worked like a charm.  I hadn't forgotten on piece.  It was amazing how we all worked like a team even though we had never practiced.  Brian did all the computer work, Chris made a wonderful booklet to hand out that they could take home.  Our audience was a lot of Middle aged people who were very interested.  A couple had tried a system but the fish stated dying as they got big.  No one knew how to measure for pH, ammonia or anything so we talked about that.  We had a question and answer period of at least 1/2 hour and they had to stop people from asking questions because we ran out of time.  We were stoked.  We are now the darlings of the BOW and they are planning the date for our next class.  It was far beyond what we had hoped for.  We would never have reached this group of people any other way. 

Comment by Meg Stout on March 11, 2012 at 12:16am

Sarah Gabriel, Heidi Wood-Tucker (from Cheney University Aquaculture Program) and I made a presentation about aquaponics at this week's Flower Show put on by the Philadelphia Horticultural Society - it's the oldest Flower Show in the US and the biggest Flower Show in the world.

We had about 60 people in the audience - it had been billed as an Aquaculture in your Garden event, so I think most people came expecting a talk about how to raise koi in an ornamental garden. You can certainly do that as well. I set up a mini aquaponics system with one of my huge goldfish and a bell siphon and planted a bunch of plants I had pulled out of my home garden that morning. I'm hoping that tickled people's fancy. Afterwards had lots of chances to talk aquaponics while talking to vendors and folks at the show. There was a display talking about the nutrient cycle that included an IBC, but they were just talking about making compost and returning food waste to conventional gardens.

By the way, the shirt was great - there were a few times aquaponics came up because I was wearing the shirt, not because I meant to bring up the topic. Now I'm back home with my plants tucked back into the garden and the goldfish returned to the sump...

Comment by TCLynx on March 10, 2012 at 9:21pm

Randall, I think anyone should promote Aquaponics.

Now please try not to get too over excited and make really unrealistic claims about it since we want people to actually believe it and I would rather people are surprised by how much better their system do rather than promoting unrealistic claims that will only leave people disappointed when they realize that the aquaponics system doesn't do windows (if you know what I mean.)

Comment by matthew ferrell on March 7, 2012 at 8:37am

Newspaper article and photo shoot are now complete.  We are hitting 4900 homes with a full page, not including store sales.  I expect to be very busy with tours in the coming months.

Reminder we will be having an open house on the 22nd.  We will have at least 150 people here already due to the bull sale. 

Comment by Michael Welber on March 5, 2012 at 4:49pm

Here's a piece I wrote for our local newspaper. 

I never water my vegetable garden.
Ever.
And yet, as the photos attest my vegetables are thriving, particularly water hungry cucumbers. How is this possible? Is some sort of alchemy occurring?
In a sense, yes there is a kind of biological magic going on. I have planted an aquaponic garden that combines raising fish (blue tilapia that I will eat) and using their effluent to fertilize the garden. Once the water from the fish tank passes through the garden beds where the plants become a bio-filter, cleaned water is returned to the tank.
Aquaponics, which was developed in Australia and is now catching on in the United States, combines the best elements of aquaculture and hydroponics. The magic happens when naturally occurring bacteria on the rocks in the garden bed convert fish feces and ammonia generated from their gills to nitrates that are taken up by the plants.
And it works. It works beyond my own expectations.
Aquaponics is particularly relevant right now because one of our most precious resources is water. So much so that the United Nations has declared March 22 World Water Day. As the climate changes and the atmosphere warms, areas of the world that used to be fertile agricultural oases are now becoming deserts. Diseases flourish where people cannot drink clean water. We in the United States waste enormous amounts of this blue gold by using potable water to flush our toilets and grow lawns.
Statistics show that the average American uses about 90 gallons of water each day in the home, and each American household uses approximately 107,000 gallons of water each year. A staggering 50-70 percent of home water is used for watering lawns and gardens.
We in the Keys are completely dependent upon a fragile aquifer on the mainland. It doesn’t take much stress for supplies to run low. For example, the Aqueduct Authority had to supplement our water allocation by running the energy-intensive desalination plant last December when we had many visitors in the Keys. It’s incumbent upon residents and visitors to conserve water by using much less, constructing cisterns and gardening wisely.
Aquaponic gardening is the wisest of all. Once I filled the fish tank with 300 gallons of cistern water, I have only occasionally had to add more due to plant respiration and natural evaporation.
The beds themselves function by a method known as flood and drain. A small pump in the fish tank sends water into the garden beds all day and all night long. They fill up with fertilized water and then, using a bell siphon, drain cleaned water back into a sump tank to be returned to the fish tank. It’s a closed and sustainable system.
There are other benefits as well. Aquaponics doesn’t require weeding or artificial or organic fertilizer such as compost. There is no dirt, which is helpful since we don’t have any in the Keys. Since the grow beds are at waist height there is no kneeling. Pests can, of course, still be a problem but healthier plants mean fewer pests. So far I have had none, though garlic and insecticidal soap sprays stand at the ready.
I planted the beds during our dry season, in late January, and the fish fingerlings arrived on February 8, a banner day. As they grew so did the plants. Abundant water and an ever-increasing amount of fish fertilizer have resulted in impressive plant vitality. I have grown several conventional organic dirt gardens in the Middle Keys but have never approached the abundance achieved so far in the aquaponics system. Cucumber plants are covered in yellow flowers and are forming fruit. Lettuce seems to double in size daily. Tomatoes are shooting up dramatically.
The plan is to garden year round, another anomaly in the hot Keys. By providing shade in the summer months I can continue with hot weather plants.
Best of all, summer and winter, I won’t water a single vegetable

Comment by Sasha Grove on February 29, 2012 at 9:56am

Not sure if you all can see this flyer. We plan to put these up around town to invite the community to see our research gardens. We are also having a preview for local homeschool families on Thursday the 22nd at 11am! Wanted to make sure it was ok to use the AP Association logo on the flyer? Really excited about our event!

Comment by Tawnya Sawyer on February 28, 2012 at 10:53am

I have posted on the events page the free aquaponics overview webinar scheduled on March 22nd from 7:30-9:00pm MT. Please check for details on the events page http://aquaponicscommunity.com/events/world-water-day-aquaponics-we... and email me at tawnya@coloradoaquaponics.com to be added to the roster. Looking forward to speaking with you and celebrating World Water Day. 

Comment by Michael Welber on February 28, 2012 at 10:50am

The point, of course, is that though the overall percentage is low it's still important for people -- especially in an area such as ours without agriculture or industry -- to conserve because they can. 

Comment by Michael Welber on February 28, 2012 at 10:49am

Yes, that's right. 

Comment by Meg Stout on February 28, 2012 at 10:46am

So would you say that the home water use is analogous to "domestic" water use? the 3.6% number?

 

Meg

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next ›
• Page