Another Oldie But Goodie

[Beeherder]

SS, lets just say you got your point across and leave the corrections to the grammar nazi's.

This system sounds like another example of how distributed systems of food production could fairly quickly replace the current centralized system if/when the motivation exists for people to take action. Some, perhaps most of the folks reading here recognize the increasing potential for catastrophic crash. How big an operation would be required to produce 25% of the protein required for a family of 4?

Eye wonder how feasible aquaculture like this would be further north where the winter temperatures are well below freezing. Seems like a basic green house with some water containers could have a enough thermal mass to resist rapid freezing and perhaps some engineering to refine the numbers is in order, maybe passive solar design would be sufficient given our 300+ days of sunshine here.

Observation - Several small farms and greenhouse operations are starting in this area in the past 3 years. A local town is laying claim to being the "foodiest town in America" which could lead one to believe this is being driven by  demand at the top but if you go to the Farmer's Market in the next town over its definitely not being marketed only to the top earners. Seems like more and more folks are waking up to the poisonous nature of modern industrial agriculture.

SS, please don't let your lack of refined skill with the written word stop you from telling us about your GREAT idea. How big is what you have now? Do you plan to make it larger and if so what do you see as the optimal size relative to what you are doing now. Could your system be operated by a family not only to feed themselves but to produce an excess for exchange? What other livestock are you planning for your integrated farming system?

Please tell us more!

[silverseeds]

    Well, you could grow rather high densities of fish. Although youd need either electrical or mechanical means of aeration for truly high densities. You could easily match any of the asian set ups, which can grow 10s of 1000s of pounds an acre.

     being far north isnt an issue if you use carp. As long as you can keep part of the pond or tank from freezing, which isnt to hard, and you have a place for some things to grow indoors through winter, like the various plants and such. Obviously the growing season is shorter, but it is his way for us anyway, and a greenhouse would extend it greatly. Ive had large amount of duckweed growing in my windows all winter, in a green house that stayed a decent temp (this was an unheated room) you could grow it all winter to. Im sure im as cold as you or close. Certainly for as long as you.

     All that said, a pond/tank shallower then a back yard swimming pool and not as large, managed well, could give a family all the fish they could use. Ive got 180 gallon stock tanks, its about as small as you can go and get good results based on all Ive read. Its the biggest I can easily get. i cold of dug something and use the pond fabric, but i dont want to rely on something like that. Ive seen some larger tanks about 500 gallons for sale before, Ive got money waiting to snap one up next time.

    Other livestock are rabbits guinea pigs and bantam chickeens. All pretty easy to feed. All of which i just now started with. So far i like the guinea pigs best. they are happy and personable, and take confinement with a smile. the rabbits always look sad to me. If their babies always look sad to, i might scrap the rabbits as it makes me sad to see them.

     its hard for me to lay out what exactly Im doing, as Im in a race against time, with several limiting factors. But Ive got more then enough plants that will feed myself and the animals well that will grow unassisted here on prepared sites. (for you as well, in CO, in all but the driest years, though some things would come and go in some years even if seeded yearly)   the important thing is, that the capitol inlay for these things can be minimal, to zero if it needed to be. though much of it takes time to build on itself. im spread a bit thin on some aspects as im trying to encompass all I can in as short a period as possible. Dont know what the future holds but could easily see it harder to source many of the key components. All of which I have now. If I was wealthier Id be further along, but Im doing pretty dang well with what I have. I will have many more solid directions to give folks about this specific high desert region after this season, and multiples more each season after that. Its to bad Im not 2-3 years ahead of where I am, but it is what it is.....

       I will say this, once I have my soil built up, and my perennials producing.... with less work then most homesteaders are known to have needed you can indeed homestead where folks were never even particularly able to do it in the past without direct access to water. Getting there is far from insurmountable but takes some time. Ensuring there is enough to harvest each and every year, is more then feasible, small or large scale, through diversity. Some years will be an over abundance.

       As for me having kept referenced my writing, its not my feelings Im concerned of hurting, only saying it because I dont always sound like I know what I do. I ignore names of things oftentimes, and details others focus on.... So many read what I write and assume Ive got no idea what Im talking about. But I really do. Im self taught, and naturally inclined to structure things this way anyway, top that off with me having decided to tackle 40 issues at once, instead of 10, and adding 10 every few years. I was late to the show I guess. So i more was saying that to validate that I knew what I was talking about, and even though in some things exact details need worked out.... all the backing is there to show clearly its only a matter of tweaking the numbers so to speak. It all gets as complicated or as un complicated as you want it. How I describe something for most implies for them a direction to use such knowledge... when I try to relate it in such a way so as to hint at the various ways to use a known data point.....

       

   

[offdalip]

what I have really found from reading SS's all very interesting posts is he distills what it takes to live in a low water rationed environment in certain areas.

water is becoming a scarcer commodity.

I thought briefly of setting up ponds, a few hundred yards from my house they terrafarmed fish here in the 70's, but it seems easier to just fish here.

If I did it/     it would be a fish pool with overhanging vegetable hydroponic setup being circulated by solar pumps.

I've worked out half of that system on the flora side, it is amazingly efficient.

We cannot even eat some of the stuff we make, it's just too much

[silverseeds]

  Just for reference, if water ever became truly scarce for me Id simply lower the density of the fish set up to something easily within the confines of the water I do have, until I had more water to add to the system. but I like diversity, and presuming i get everything set up in time, keeping these tanks filled will be no issue. As for now I still have running water, and irrigate the garden. no reason to rely on bare bones knowledge I do have if I dont have to. Also at the community level should people ever have a mind to, it would be easy to set up ponds that could feed the whole city in a few short years. Ive got hordes of ideas along those lines, and its a small town.... Such ideas just might get traction proposed at the right time, to the right folks.

  Also, theres not many other things that in such a small space you can grow all your protein AND feed it. You could do this in most any area for a few hundred bucks, in your front yard, if you move things manually. Obviously pumps cost more, and save lots of effort, but  I want to work with the lowest tech options first. Depending on how things play out though, I think there is a huge profit potential to making such projects commercial sized. Feeding costs are 60-70 percent of the costs in a commercial fish farm. With a bit more infrastructure then a antibiotic cesspool industrial fish farm, you could grow their feeds as well, keep the densities a tad lower..... and all types of other things as well depending on your goals. But these things can essentially grow themselves.

    another thought Ive had is to have to levels to my area for water plants to filter. Im going to try it out anyway.... Id take the water to a tank to grow "greenwater" algae. theres a couple tests I want to do with this. First it grows even faster then the duckweeds, and I can finish cleaning up the water, but i can also have many interesting things in there eating the stuff, like phyto planton type things and clams, and shrimp etc. these will all, live with my other water plants well enough but some will do very well with the green water like that... I like clams used for this, because I can feed them to the chickens or fish, but also crush their shells for the chickens. (sowbugs are also easy to cultivate for extra calcium for chickens)

   another thing to remember is, if you dont have your set up on a continuous cycled pump, which i wont, then change the water between the tanks at the highest point of temp in the day. the water will have more oxygen in it.

[silverseeds]

what I have really found from reading SS's all very interesting posts is he distills what it takes to live in a low water rationed environment in certain areas.

water is becoming a scarcer commodity.

I thought briefly of setting up ponds, a few hundred yards from my house they terrafarmed fish here in the 70's, but it seems easier to just fish here.

If I did it/     it would be a fish pool with overhanging vegetable hydroponic setup being circulated by solar pumps.

I've worked out half of that system on the flora side, it is amazingly efficient.

We cannot even eat some of the stuff we make, it's just too much

Do you add magnesium, potassium, and iron?(the ones most often missing) Those are commonly missing in such set ups. People have to add them from other sources. the food can be nutritionally deficient as well, according to many sources. Lots of BIG projects planned along these lines either feel through or were abandoned because of these exact issues. the field is filled with failed experiments to these ends, to get HEALTHY land based plants in such systems. Greens will concentrate nitrates to high levels, although in that case, putting them in different water before you eat it, pulls many back out.

based on what you said, it sounds like your tanks cycle only when their is sunlight? Or will you have a battery? Im pretty sure youd have issues then. I stopped my studies into that section of this because of the issues with land based plants, so perhaps I missed something, but you need to flood and drain the beds. You need to drain them so the plants dont drown, and flood them so they stay wet. the bacteria that cause the nitrification cycle live on those rocks. without oxygen they die. things can go anaerobic pretty fast. So without those bacteria turning ammonia into nitrites, then another one takes it to nitrates, which apparently is the form land based plants need it in. the water based plants dont need this to do their thing. they will take it out as is, and much faster. So even if you perfect whatever your talking about, consider growing water based things to feed the fish, other animals, or as a garden amendment. Even just adding a grow bed doing this would greatly improve the efficiency of the other systems, as the water plants clean it to a greater degree of purity as well. Lots of things that could go wrong and wreck the whole thing set up like that, which is another reason to have the water plants to....

Id get malaysian trumpet snails for your growing medium. If what your thinking of works like all the others Ive read on, and you cant keep the system cycling for some reason, they should do okay at keeping the growing medium oxygenated so that you dont end up with anaerobic conditions, or atleast delay them.

[offdalip]

It cycles twice a day at the hottest times of the day for a hour each cycle with well oxygenated water from a tank.
The well draining coconut husks the plants grow on do not receive water the rest of the period.
 I add a little potassium, calcium some nitrogen and less magnesium or iron, both as slow release and into the water.
It is not solar powered but it could be. It is on a timer.
Water is lost after going thru the plants. That's why I thought of maybe hanging them over a pool to reclaim the water.
Right now that is impossible since they are staked to the ground

[silverseeds]

  Sounds like you know what your doing then.... Most ignore the missing things.... Id still add water based plants if i were you, they make lots of ways to put them right in the tank with the fish, but the fish cant get to them. you scoop out the excess as it grows for the fish.

[offdalip]

Id still add water based plants if i were you,

I would be very scared to do that.

Those kind of things tend to grow exponentially faster the warmer it gets, which is much of the year.

then they become pests and nuisance plants.

I blew up my banana plants for that reason

[silverseeds]

    Life is full of choices, but if we are talking tanks here, the chances of you not being able to get rid of it permenantly in a few minutes are pretty much zero. Even a small pond.

    what do you plan to feed the fish then?

[offdalip]

no no no, these are all hypothetical thoughts.

not very likely my wife would let me install fish tanks or pools.

[Beeherder]

Glad to see this thread has stayed alive.

I didn't mean totally self sustaining or closed system. Just my poor communications skills at work. It does sound like this could be done carefully so as to minimize external inputs.

Thanks for sharing your design thoughts SS. You have me thinking about how to create a greenhouse attachment on the south side of my garage large enough for a three tank system. Each tank to consist of a 250 gallon IBC. These IBCs are what bulk oils like organic sunflower oil are shipped in to large restaurants. It takes me some time to clean them up but i know they are food grade. If i painted the plastic bladder and had it set on a pallet to stop heat transfer to the ground they would become the heat storage unit keeping it warm at night. Maybe a night curtain for the coldest 60 days of winter. Wind is a real consideration in all systems here. This will take lots more thought but it just seems like such a good idea that i should be finding a way to do it here or near here.

This year my irrigation water storage is increased by adding 4 of these IBCs along the north side of the house. The top tank is fed by the roof gutter and overflows to the next tank, etc resulting in an additional 750 gallons storage for me this year. This will help with the earth based gardens but the roof water would not be sufficient for aquaponics. Just not dependably regular. But by using more winter captured snow melt roof runoff maybe, just maybe i could get by without using the tap water.

hmmm???? duckweed? floating growing medium for plants? Is it necessary for the plant roots to get exposed to air, is that why you drain the plant growing tank??

Tell me if i have this right.

3 tanks, tank for fish, tank for plants, tank for nutrient mixing?

[silverseeds]

        Duckweed doesnt need exposed to air. It doesnt even need the nitrification cycle that other plants do. Which is what makes it so far superior to land based plants in such a system. Land based plants need much more infrastructure, more can go wrong without electricity especially. They need a growing medium that is flooded and drained, for specific bacteria to live in and turn ammonia into other forms, duckweed can process it as ammonia saving many steps, and adding great efficiency. It just so happens to be very useful as well.

      the duckweed doesnt need that infrastructure, and is a great food for many types of animals. So the whole point is that I can set up a much cheaper system, that is easier to manage, and if need be can be by without electricity. All while providing the fish a healthier food. With something like offdablip is talking about, the main goal is really production of plants, not the fish. They are secondary really. atleast as most set them up. Its basically a different form of hydroponics, and IF you add the missing minerals it can do well, if you dont have sources of them, its no use doing. I certainly wouldnt want to have to rely on that for production, when growing in soil is much more assured. they can be hard to regulate, or fail. Theres nothing to mess up with how im doing it, and nothing to break or malfunction that a simple transfer of water with a bucket couldnt take care of if nothing else.

Theres no nutrients to mix, unless your growing land based plants. which is fine, but youll need much more growing area if you have more then a handful of fish, youll need sources of the missing elements, youll need many more pumps, and lots more infrastructure.... so it costs more, needs more outside input, can never keep the water as clean (not including any other filters that either systems could use),  has more that can go wrong... and on and on.

          So if your doing it anything like im talking, 250 gallon tanks would be great for the fish, but overkill for the plants, as that only needs to be a few inches deep. More surface area is better then deeper for that. for the fish, go as big as possible. Youd want many multiples of the surface area of your tanks, and it depends on stocking densities, but you could easily do both growing things like tomatoes, and all the duckweed to keep the water in line and feed your fish and many other types of animals.

So not only can you minimalize external inputs, besides evaporation, youd need almost no outside inputs once you owned all those plants and tanks. Even electricity could be bypassed with a handpump if you wanted. A windmill could oxygenate mechanically. Lots of other useful plants that you can grow while bypassing the nitrification cycle. Duckweed is just the most efficient, and overall useful, capable by itself of cleaning the water.

[offdalip]

I need to take some fishing classes or something.

My neighbors feasted yesterday on grouper, seatrout and flounder they caught right off
their house and I keep coming up with only carp..... 

[Dame]

I do not like carp either.  And, I get really bored fishing.  We have a fresh water fish farm not too far from here.  The local grocery store fishes there for me.

[Ozark Lady]

I will trade ya two trout for just one carp!

Trout are so easy to catch around here, and so awful to eat.
We have had trout hatcheries for all my life, then they are released into the lake and river.
I assume that is why trout aren't worth eating here.

Carp are good eating, a bit bony though!  Try this, next time you go to fry carp or any other strong flavored fish, soak it in salt water a few hours, then drain it.  As you heat the oil, add a bit of vinegar, I mean about a tablespoon per cup of oil, or fat... Get that oil almost smoking, and deep enough to float the fish, when it is done it will float to the top.

That fixes almost any fish to be edible... except trout.