Some photos of my Aquaponics designs and systems at our home, mini-farm and research center! We will begin selling organic produce to the local health food store and at the farmers market in three weeks :) This spiral system in the first of its kind, I call it our Spiral-ponics. It can grow up to 330 Rainbow Trout, 100 Tiger Prawns and 2,300 +/- plants at the same time while using only 2.3 gallons of water per day and 40 watts of electricity (less than a light bulb)... Were growing Avocados, Bananas and chinese water chestnuts in the spiral too! It is continually producing mixed greens and herbs at an astonishing rate of approx. 120 lbs. per week! Even if we put 2.3 gallons in a spray bottle and tried to mist it on our gardens in the soil, theres no way we could water 2,300 plants with that little water. We never water, weed or till soil, add fertilizers or compost, dont need to mulch or even repair drip irrigation systems. All this food requires around 20 mins. per day of labor and after a year we get the bonus of eating or selling the 325 lbs. of trout were growing in the fish tank! These trout are fed fish food we make onsite, we even raise our own fish for a mercury free, radiation free source of fish meal. Mix this with the worms we grow, high protein plants and some insects harvested from our solar powered insect traps and we have a truly self supporting system. One of the systems receives its water needs from our rainwater harvesting tank and we are currently adding more rainwater storage to meet the needs of all the Aquaponics here. In addition to the trout, we are raising catfish, sturgeon, bass and sunfish as well as guppies, white clouds and mosquito fish. Oh yeah, did I mention we are totally off-grid solar powered, have been for 12 years now :) Thanks you to all who have helped and supported us :) Life is good up here. Feeling so fortunate and counting our blessings. We are home to Nor Cal Aquaponics, norcalaquaponics Aquaponics and Permaculture research and training center. Our last course way a huge success. Come for a tour sometime...
Posted on: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 17:19:26 +0000
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