Hello From Lake Erie(ish?)

[JCO]

Was that a YEA or a NEA?

[Emmett]

I'm a bit shy of putting my picture online. Makes me nervous.

[pniedzwiecki]

Hello Emmett,

Good luck with your project. I am just getting started myself. So far, I find that it is every bit as enjoyable as I envisioned it would be. And I don’t even have fish in my tank yet! Hopefully you will find it enjoyable as well.

After reading your opening post I wanted to make sure that yourself and others new to aquaponics are under no illusions.

In your first post you commented, “I was setting up a hydroponics system and then read a bit on aquaponics and realized it was easier and better so here I am.”

Once we understand that aquaponics is a combination of hydroponics and aquaculture we can then realize that the whole (aquaponics) couldn’t possibly be simpler than either of its parts. Once you combine them, there are somewhat delicate balances that have to be achieved and then maintained, that may not otherwise be necessary if you were just doing one or the other. I would also like to point out that hydroponics and aquaculture are both viable on their own without aquaponics.

Just wondering to myself if any of that really makes sense?

anyway, I don’t want to discourage anyone but at the same time I wouldn’t want anyone to get the wrong impression only to find that aquaponics is way more than they bargained for.

Again, good luck.

Thanks.

[Emmett]

I understand what you're saying but aquaponics is easier in my eyes because it does not require the purchase of grow mixes etc. Those have to be balanced delicately also and they have to be replenished constantly. It's a constant cost and constant effort.

As evidence that aquaponics is easier I would point to the DIYers here and also the ones all over the internet that set up a fish tank and a little gravel bed and start growing. You can't easily do that with hydroponics. Maybe in a big city you can just go down to the hydroponics store but for me that requires 45 minutes of travel. I can get fish five minutes away.

Really if you rase fish in a fish tank it isn't that hard. You might have some bumps initially but once it's up and running you're usually good. This fish tank just has a biological filter. The biological filter tends to be the finicky part. If you've noticed people here might loose a fish or two and some have lost a whole tank but not often. It's the plants that can be tough to keep happy which is even more true in hydroponics.

[Emmett]

I've been picking up materials.

So far I have (for the indoor system)
The cabinet built.
A High Pressure Sodium and a Metal Halide light (each provides different wavelengths of light that are important for different growth stages)
PVC Pipe for transporting water around
metal wire shelves to suspend the GB over the FT.
A 10 gal FT
A heater if needed
An airstone and air pump.
A few 2 liter soda bottles

I need to get
A pump
A few more 2 liter soda bottles (it's weird calling it soda, we call it pop here).
Two exterior grade round electrical boxes to mount the lights on, just to keep them water resistant.
Fish (still trying to figure out what to use, Crayfish? nah I don't want to eat those.)
GB media, I'll prolly go with pea gravel.
Time (my constant enemy)

[jackalope]

Welcome Emmett, somehow I missed welcoming you to the forum .... at my age I tend to miss some days too, but that's another story! It sounds like you've got a pretty good start, I like Guppies for a small system, as Goldies require more water volume per fish (according to those on the Goldie forums), those folks thought I was terrible when I told them that I was going to eat the fish when they got large enough!

Guppies are hard to kill, and tend to reproduce quickly and often, so I would get 3 or 4 fancy males and about twice as many feeder females, and let them go at it! You can possibly sell the male offspring for 30 to 50 cents each to local pet shops as they get old enough to identify, to help defray some of your costs if you live in or near a large city, and when you get your Tilapia tank going, you can feed any extras to the Tilapia ... they go crazy for them!

[Emmett]

Hi, thanks! It would be really cool to be able to have at least one edible in the FT. I'm not big on crayfish or clams though. I'd lean toward crayfish, but my son is allergic to shellfish.

Maybe I could justify it more if I used the guppies to feed the eating fish when I get the bigger system built. I'd be pretty happy with that.