New going hungry and needing alot of help

[Corey B]

Hello sorry this is my first post but I need help.
I have been reading every thing I can on aquaponics for the past two week. The short of the story is our family income has been cut to 1/4 and we are now having to rely on welfare to try and keep some food on the table. I do not want to feed my kids the crap that we have to rely on from welfare. I have been scraping together every penny I can for the past 3 months and I think I have enough to start a decent size system. I have $500 to work with.
I will have to do the system indoors because I need year around production. I live in Iowa so winter is to harsh.
I have a very small basement and the largest concern with it is it is only 6 ft tall at the highest and about 5' 6" under the duct work of the furnace is this enough height? I was either going to use a 150 gal water trough for the fish tank or build my own with wood and a pond liner. I figured the build my own I could keep the height down a bit and make up the amount of water with length.
My other option is to put the system upstairs where I have a lot of room 3 rooms actually (old farm house) but I am very concerned with the weight. I would like to start in the area of 150 gal fish tank and by my ruff, unknowledgeable math I have come up with a system that can weigh around 3,600 pounds.
This seems excessive to have up stairs. Is this too heavy for upstairs or is my math wrong?
The other thing is lighting I thought about using T5 florescent do to the overall cost per month vs light output. I have a ton of questions and I know all the answers are on this forum already so please do not be offended but I need to feed my family and do not want to do it off of state aid. so getting all the answers in one place will just make it a faster process for me. Thank you for your knowledge and your help.

[urbanfarmer]

Hello sorry this is my first post but I need help.
I have been reading every thing I can on aquaponics for the past two week. The short of the story is our family income has been cut to 1/4 and we are now having to rely on welfare to try and keep some food on the table. I do not want to feed my kids the crap that we have to rely on from welfare. I have been scraping together every penny I can for the past 3 months and I think I have enough to start a decent size system. I have $500 to work with.
I will have to do the system indoors because I need year around production. I live in Iowa so winter is to harsh.
I have a very small basement and the largest concern with it is it is only 6 ft tall at the highest and about 5' 6" under the duct work of the furnace is this enough height? I was either going to use a 150 gal water trough for the fish tank or build my own with wood and a pond liner. I figured the build my own I could keep the height down a bit and make up the amount of water with length.
My other option is to put the system upstairs where I have a lot of room 3 rooms actually (old farm house) but I am very concerned with the weight. I would like to start in the area of 150 gal fish tank and by my ruff, unknowledgeable math I have come up with a system that can weigh around 3,600 pounds.
This seems excessive to have up stairs. Is this too heavy for upstairs or is my math wrong?
The other thing is lighting I thought about using T5 florescent do to the overall cost per month vs light output. I have a ton of questions and I know all the answers are on this forum already so please do not be offended but I need to feed my family and do not want to do it off of state aid. so getting all the answers in one place will just make it a faster process for me. Thank you for your knowledge and your help.

Hi Corey, welcome to the forum

Yes, we can try to help you the best we can. That sounds like a 400 gallon system. Assuming some minimal variables, I can quickly assume some costs for the electric in such a system:

(400 Watts / 50 gallons) or 3200 Watts for a 400 gallon system. That's about 27 amps @ 120 volts; so, you will need to figure in the electrical wiring and how you have it spread out around the house.

3200 Watts at $0.12/kWhr national average for a 12 hours day per 30 day month = $138 per month

Now, we'll assume 80 pounds of fish for your 400 gallon system. If it takes 6 months for the fish to reach 1 pound, and assuming a 3% feed rate per day using inexpensive feed.

6 months = 180 days with an mean average poundage of 40 pounds of fish mass per day = 7200 pound days of fish

@ 3% feed that's 216 pound days so we'll say FIVE 50 pound bags @ $15 a bag = $15 / month in feed

Disregarding the cost of water, nutrient supplements, and your labor, that equates to about $155 a month, add 10% margin because you're going to be amazing at this with our help (that's a low margin of error by the way): $175 per month

40 pounds of fish per 6 months is about 0.25 pounds of fish a day. That's about the size of ONE Tilapia fillet at the store. You really can't feed a family on that.

However, and without showing my calculations, you will get around 1.42 heads of lettuce a day. Again, not enough to feed your family.

CONCLUSION:
You can buy A LOT of food for $175 a month, more than you can grow indoors.

If you can do it outdoors, where the sun is free (and you will get bigger and better crops from this, higher calories and higher nutrition), growing your own food makes sense from an economical standpoint. If you wanted to do this as a hobby indoor or to grow your own herbs (or whatever) at ANY cost, great, grow indoors. This won't work for you unless the government picks up your electric bill, too.

Sorry for the bad news. Before I started calculating it for you, I expected to get a reasonable number to say that it's feasible, but alas it really doesn't make sense compared to outright buying food.

Buy seeds and plant them in the soil outdoors during the good season. Assuming you have decent soil, it won't cost you more than the seeds. You can't beat that!

I just grew a 2 foot x 4 foot grow bed of radish in SAND. They were ready in less than 4 weeks, and the only fertilizer I used was peeing on them once or twice a week (this is free by the way). I still haven't eaten them all. They are low in calories (high in nutrients and antioxidants), but that's just an example if you really need to grow food for your family. Turnips, cabbage, and many other crops are good options, even in colder months. An outdoor mini-green house made of cheap plastic can help extend the growing season substantially while protecting your plants from pests. Many many other options, but outdoors is the way to go.

[keith_r]

i have a small system in my basement, working on redesigning now, becuase i'm at just over 6' clearance in the section of the basement where i'll put my larger growbeds.. but my small growbed is doing well inside with 3 pairs of t8 flourescent lights..

[Bioritize]

Hey Another Iowa Dude!!!

Hey Man our electricity is only .08 cents per KW. Crazy right

I am not quite sure where you got the electrical usage estimates. Some pumps use very small amounts of power 200 watts max, you can get a couple of 200 watt Fluorescent ballasts, 20,000 to 40,000 lumens depending on the brand. That is less than 20 kWh per day or 1.60 per day = $584 per year max.

The food will cost you, to me, you can get a ton of benefit by starting your out door plants indoors using aquaponics. This would payfor itself if you would utilize outdoor planting in the good parts of the year.

Black soldier flies, worms, duckweed would cut your costs a ton.

I would go with a intex above ground pool, 8' x 30" deep for only 50 bones. Pump, Growbeds, lights, You could get all that done for less than $2000. I made a 50 gallon system for about $300, but that does not provide much food. I would say you need at least 300 gallons to make it worthwhile.

If you build your own tanks and beds you may be able to save some cash too.

[cedarswamp]

I'm not sure I follow your electric usage est. either UF, but you can grow ALOT of lettuce from a $1 pack of seeds. My problem was I couldn't use it fast enough and ended up throwing alot in the compost heap. Your livestock feed est. sounds high too. How fat are your fish?

[Corey B]

well I know I will not be able to replace the stor but I would really like to off set the amount of food we have to buy from there. I would like to use worms and fly's and that is on my list of things to learn and ask about but for now I need to know if 6' basement is tall enough or if I can do it up stairs with out it moving it self to the first floor.

[JCO]

Welcome to the show....pull up an easy chair, relax and stay awhile. New voices are always a welcome addition to our family..! Whatever questions you have on you mind, this is the place to get the answers so pick a topic of your interest and start your own thread and Enjoy.

[Corey B]

Hey Another Iowa Dude!!!

Hey Man our electricity is only .08 cents per KW. Crazy right

I am not quite sure where you got the electrical usage estimates. Some pumps use very small amounts of power 200 watts max, you can get a couple of 200 watt Fluorescent ballasts, 20,000 to 40,000 lumens depending on the brand. That is less than 20 kWh per day or 1.60 per day = $584 per year max.

The food will cost you, to me, you can get a ton of benefit by starting your out door plants indoors using aquaponics. This would payfor itself if you would utilize outdoor planting in the good parts of the year.

Black soldier flies, worms, duckweed would cut your costs a ton.

I would go with a intex above ground pool, 8' x 30" deep for only 50 bones. Pump, Growbeds, lights, You could get all that done for less than $2000. I made a 50 gallon system for about $300, but that does not provide much food. I would say you need at least 300 gallons to make it worthwhile.

If you build your own tanks and beds you may be able to save some cash too.

Thanks Bioritize,
Do you currently have a system up and running? I would really love the chance to check out an operating system in person.
When you say 300 gallons are you meaning just the fish tank size or the whole system? Like 150 fish tank and 150 grow beds.
Also do you know where the best place to get Black Soldier flies and duck weed is.

[Bioritize]

Some Video's of it on my post here (Bioritize System Progress)

I was talking about tank size, 300 gallons of fish tank space would let you grow out about 50 fish all the time and you would have plenty of nutrients for lots of grow beds.

Yea man message me to try and hook up.

I think you can just attract the soldier flies in this area. As far as duckweed, I have not checked but I would be interested in some if you find it around here.

[rfeiller]

should you be able to do aquaponics you might research out which veggies are the most nutritious, require less care being easier to grow and will hold up for a period of time when ripe such as summer squash 4-6mos., lettuce is nice in a salad but just about worthless as far as nutrition and durability. crops of the cabbage family are durable and easy to grow, swiss chard and other leafy veggies can provide a contineous harvest of leaves. so veggies can do ok with less light, less utility cost. you might start out with using the raft type grow beds where you do not have to be concerned with the cost of the media, except enough to provide nitrification. it also increase the water volumn which helps produce a more stable system. these are also the least expensive grow beds to make and one can flow into the next, i do recommend two small water pumps to one larger one in case of a failure on the part of one of the pumps you still have a running system. the glitch in the program is of course what type of aquatic animal do you want to raise.

you might look into incorporating black soldier fly larva and red wiggler earthworms into the mix. they can provide additional nutrients without an increase in utilities. set up properly you can feed the bsf larva and excess red wiggler earthworms to your fish, which would allow you to raise say perch or bluegill or other types of fish without the heating cost attributed to tilapia. if supplimental feeding with live food i.e. larva and worms you can use a lessor quality fish food pellet saving money and still get good results. the worms and larva can be raised with garbage, newspaper, cardboard that would cost you nothing. there is nothing wrong in using everything at you disposal aquaculture, vermiponics, vermiculture, bsf. i am incorporating all of these with wonderful results.
you will not produce all of the fish proteen you might hope for, but then folks such as Badflash on this forum intergrates several different types of aquatic animals to produce food for his table and nutrients for his plants.

welcome to our forum.