worms in aquaponics?

[JeffW]

Hey peeps..new here as of FEB 11th


I saw a video with someones system having a worm in it, then i got to wondering if this might be another idea that has yet to be discovered. meaning is it possible to have red worms living in the pebbles along with the plants in a Aquaponic system?

Interesting thought since what could harm the worms? Or better yet what harm can the worms do while thriving in the grow bed?

Just something that it on my mind

Jeff

Hey Jeff,

Welcome aboard...I haven't talked to anyone in a while, but your post rang some bells with me. I read somewhere on the net in the past that a guy was raising red earthworms in his clay pebble media in his hydroponic section of his aquaponics set up and doing so quite successfully.

He said they were living on the debris that collected there from the flow of the water from his Talipia ponds so I guess all you have to do not is put it into operation in your setup and prove him right.

Got anymore good info you've been hording that would be of interest to the rest of us?

[JeffW]

LOL well I have idea's and wonder about things all the time but not sure what the rest of the world might think. With that said I have been keeping an eye on the world's food supply and how the corp. have taken over making food for us (the people). Books in the library about how the food now has less nutrients than ever because it is designed to grow fast and mass produced.

Anyway the people in some countries have to spend 70% of whatever their income is just on fuel alone and that is disgusting. I am a green thinker and believe in common sense and all that but what is happening is the "bio fuel" boom has caused us to burn corn instead of using it for "food". They are making corn sugar and ethanol and all these things and all that time people can not afford a decent meal for a child?

All the diesel being used in tractors to make field corn that is then burned as a fuel? Am I off track or is there something wrong with this picture? Well my point I guess is that these hydroponic and aquaponics just might be a hidden blessing in the near future if not already. We can grow healthy foods and at the same time the amount of resources to do these things are low. Is this a thought that anyone else shares cause I am open minded to education but I sense trouble in the food chain.

They say people are getting over weight and at the same time the processed foods they eat are low in quality. This is not good for the brain developing I am assuming.

Anyway that is my rant today..lol...actually as time goes by I would love to share some idea's or concepts here on the board I need to be with peeps that are like me or I go crazy having these thoughts and no place to lay them out ya know?

JEFF

[badflash]

You are a little off track, but not that far. Over 70% of the corn grown in the USA is for cattle feed. Cattle are not meant to eat corn and they digest it poorly. If you were to first convert the corn starch to sugar, then ferment it, you would get about 2 & 1/2 gallons of ethanol for every 55# of corn. What is left over is a high quality feed that puts on weight faster than the original 55# of corn. The waste stillage can be used to make methane to run the stills, and what comes out of the digester can be use to grow plants as it is a great fertilizer.

We could easily convert to an alcohol based economy. Brazil did it.

[JeffW]

My Grandpa was a farmer and he is long gone but we remember him saying to us "when man starts burning food then there is a problem". I often wondered what he meant since he died long before modern marvels. There use to be allot of dairy farms here now all you see is mile after mile of corn fields along with massive tractors spraying ammonia and injecting it into the soil.

Worm do not react well to ammonia on it's skin. This is the soil that is down the road and blows across the land. This is the soil that we are digesting.

[badflash]

You grandfather was likely talking about the depression. The farmers couldn't sell their crops. Some had to burn them for heat. To prop up prices Roosevelt sent farm agents to burn harvests and kill calves and pigs. Oboma is walking in his footsteps.

Worms are fine in a flood & grain growbed as long as there is plenty of fish poop. Worms breath through their skins so they need a well oxygenated environment. I've seen them live for over a week submerged in a tank that I had an air stone going in.

[JeffW]

You lost me sorry..Obama wants to kill calves and pigs?

[badflash]

Obama wants to follow the same path a Roosevelt. He is one of Obama's big role models. Roosevelt took a recession and turned it into a depression. That is exactly what is happening now. As part of Roosevelt's attempts at putting an end to the depression, he experimented with destroying supply to increase food prices. Burning crops and killing livestock was part of the desperation to fix things. Government tinkering caused the depression to last until the USA entered WWII.

I suggest you give The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes a read. My grandfather, a farmer and life long democrat could barely utter Roosevelt's name without spitting on the ground.

I don’t want to stir the political pot here since this is an Aquaponics forum, but for this time only I will have to say that I believe Obama will go down in history as one of if not the worst Presidents America will have ever had.

The way I see it, if you are here you are either a patriotic American or you need to go back to where you came from regardless of whether you are Muslim, Hispanic, Asian or from Mars.

I’ve also had my belly full of such phrases as AFRICAN AMERICANS, ASAIN AMERICANS, MUSLIM AMERICANS, MEXICAN AMERICANS and so on down the line. You are either an American or not. If you were born here regardless of what color you are or where you came from, you are an American and should act like it and in the best interest of America.

LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT AND TAKE YOUR TRASH WITH YOU.

Kinda got off track there a bit…sorry, it won’t happen again…that is until the next time you get me started

[JeffW]

Sorry if I disrupted the board by questioning. As a son of 2 WWII veterans and a veteran myself I think it is ok to speak ones mind but I will not be silent all the time.

If I need to leave this board I will there are many other places to go and share info.