Aquaponics with Fish Tanks?

[arcab4]

I've always wanted a pond in the backyard but it's something that I haven't gotten around to it yet or I feel like I'll be in a place long enough to really take care of a pond (maybe the next owner won't want a pond). So I've always just researched and looked around for when that day comes.

A few weeks ago (at wholesfood - supermarket here in socal) they were selling this aquaponic thing with a betta in it. so the water waste from the betta feeds the plants/herbs at top. pretty neat.

researching it some more, there's some serious movement behind this aquaponics... this picture is impressive.

and then i guess this kinda explains how it works.

and then i was reading about how aquaponics can be used with a pond and that sounds great. i don't know if it's because i'm getting old, but gardening sounds more interesting than it did like 10 years ago and who would've thought I'd be composting haha. and if i can combine fishkeeping with gardening, it's a win-win situation.

just wondering if anyone here actually does aquaponics. I did find some information here: http://www.myfishtank.net/go/aquaponics
*disclosure: MFT gets compensated if you actually buy from that link*

I'll continue to research and post what i find.

 

[exhumed07]

I forget the company but there is one where the plants are grown in a rock bed and there was a 55 gallon drum at the top with large mouth bass where the water cascades down out of that barrel and down to the gravel bed to supply the plants and then drains off into sistern where it then gets pumped back to the drums with the fish in it. this is small scale but the idea is to grow both fish and plants at the same time for sale. most vegetable plants do not like having roots constantly wet and they solved this by a hose twisted into a loop at the end of the plant bed. once the water in the plant bed got so high it would cause a siphon effect and drain the water out. gave the roots some air and then once it was drained it started to fill on it's own again. it's a really cool idea i think.

Another form of this kinda growing has been done in japan for many many years where they put talapia into the rice fields. the talapia ate insects that could harm the plants while adding fertilizer through waste. then once the rice was ready to be picked the fields were drained and both fish and rice were collected. I know it's not the same thing but it's another form of using fish to help plants grow.

 

[arcab4]

the fish idea underneath is cool....but would you end up developing a bond with the fish..or would you eat them too? so you get veggies and fish.

 

[Newman]

i don't think anyone would be bonding with tilapia lmao.
also you can help the plant roots get air by either using an air stone, or making a waterfall that the roots can touch, but still get air because the majority of the root is in the humid air. nutrient film is deposited on the bottom of the flowing water fall (the water fall is not vertical but much more horizontal, sloped, almost flat). this lets roots get to the nutrient film and have air at the same time. only tips of roots are actually in full water.

 

[FishDad]

Seems to me that this would be much better utilized on already existing bodies of water that have fish populations. This bears a striking similarity to windmills, where the cost of jumpstarting and maintaining neutralizes the output. But if you could set up something like 'floating crop fields" on the great lakes, you might have something there. Otherwise, flyover country will out-produce you any day of the week.

 

[Newman]

well in a big lake nutrients are not concentrated enough to be of use in hydroponics, also there may be ones missing from the system that the plants need. usually in hydroponics w/o fish the fertilizer mix has every macro and micro nutrient the plants need so plants grow well.

as far as i know hydroponic systems on private scale are cheap, but i have no idea how they fare on large scale maintenance and upkeep costs. i guess if it was better than regular farming, we'd be doing it large scale right now, but it isn't yet.

 

[FishDad]

Well see, you raise another point. I have no idea how the price points work out but someone who would try to make money off of this would have to weigh the cost(material, equipment, food, labor) of keeping fish vs. the cost of a fertilizer mix.

Also, I can only speak for lake Erie, but we get pretty severe algae blooms. So in my humble opinion, if you have the nutrients for algae then you have the nutrients for plants. I could be wrong though, definitely no expert.

It just seems to me that this sort of thing only makes sense on a very, very large scale. And like Newman said, its not happening. But it could, however the wisdom of farming hasn't changed very much in the past few thousand years.

 

[exhumed07]

don't forget the dead zones in lake erie fishdad. also if doing floating fields look at the shadows it would cause. massive parts of the water would be perminently darkened. i don't see that going well. also as stated earlier the costs could be astronomical for large scale of this setup, BUT for a home self grown vegetable garden i would not think it would be to costly.

Aquaponics System. Food Chain Lex. Large Aquaponics System with Tilapia - YouTube This is the video i was thinking about with the small scale aquaponics

 

[Newman]

cool video.

 

[FishDad]

I don't know, if you stagger the floats then you really wouldn't be making that big of an impact. They staggered them in the photos, so I don't see why you could do the same on a large scale. Much more difficult feats of engineering have been accomplished by man. Also more shade would be a welcome for lake Erie. As I said before we have problems with algae blooms, which (I've been told) is caused by the water being too clear, resulting in sunlight hitting the bottom of the lake.

Seems like this might be perfect lake Erie actually.

 

[Newman]

aren't algae blooms more often caused by the overabundance of nutrients in the water? such as runoff ferts. algae can't grow just on a lot of light hitting all the water all the way to the bottom. they need their micro and macro nutrients too!

 

[OrangeCones]

Any floating plant (algae included) has a great advantage if it floats and has access to and can use nitrogen and carbon from the air. You are right that all plants still need micronutrients.

 

[FishDad]

I don't know much about it but I always assumed the sunlight has a great effect on it. Every time the lake turns green their is always a big write up in the Plain Dealer (local paper) about the lake being "too clean". Funny isn't it?

 

[Newman]

its probably not too clean on the level of their water chemistry then. there is likely some nutrient related thing going on that is contributing to those algae blooms.
some algae blooms do indeed start on the benthic surface, and some of that probably floats up to multiply even further.

 

[OrangeCones]

Algae blooms are often caused by an imbalance in the nutrition needed for more advanced plants.

 

[exhumed07]

one reason for those blooms is the zebra mussels. they have cleaned the water incredibly well which on one side is a good thing. but on the bad side they take filter out the zooplankton which would otherwise keep the algae under control. they also hurt by taking all the plankton that the smaller bait fish live off of which hurts the higher organisms such as the ring perch, walleye, small mouths, and other fish like pike. then with the run off from farms and such as stated earlier it creates a nutrient soup which helps the blooms. It's really a complicated system and i know i forgot stuff. but all in all it comes out to invasive species causing/contributing to an imbalance. if u can't tell i'm kinda a nature nut and have done research on this stuff. still wondering what causes the dead zones east of sandusky bay and catwba point or however it's spelled. it's just a large like several square mile patch of the lake that has no dissolved oxygen. i still have found no answers to that.

 

[FishDad]

That's right, the zebra mussels. I forgot about those. They were actually introduced if I remember correctly, for their cleaning ability. But it has had negative effects, like you said. I'm also pretty sure that those dead zones coincide with the deepest parts of the lake. I remember looking at a topographical map of lake Erie and their are two abyss-like features in those areas. I think they go down to like 160 feet, whereas the rest of the lake averages from 20 to 60 feet.

 

[OrangeCones]

From what I learned in an Ecology class, they were accidently introduced from trans-Atlantic ships, coming inside ballast waters of those ocean-going vessels.

 

[FishDad]

Your probably right OC. Now that you mention it, I think some other animal was introduce to counter the zebra mussels. I can't remember what though.

 

[FreshyFresh]

From what I learned in an Ecology class, they were accidently introduced from trans-Atlantic ships, coming inside ballast waters of those ocean-going vessels.

At one time we had all kinds of counter-measures built into the cooling water system at our plant (my work) because of the zebra muscles. The problem seemed to peak maybe around the mid/late 1980s. Way before my time there. No issues anymore. They mostly wiped themselves out.