Aquaponics, a Gardening System Using Fish | Hacker News Reader

Aquaponics, a Gardening System Using Fish

nytimes.com

58 pointsmtalantikite21 comments

The yields he's getting from this system (nearly 350 cherry tomatoes from one plant; 58 cucumbers per plant?) are incredible.

Wonder what kind of square footage you need of this setup to completely assauge the food requirements of one adult (minus, maybe, grains and fruit) - fish, beans and veggies.

Also wondering what it would take to set up something like this on a roof in brooklyn.. Ponderous!

The real question is what are the water, energy, and labor hour inputs.

Agricultural scientists and businessmen are no slouches. If this were truly an economical way to feed lots of people it would probably already be widespread.

Most "high yield" methods you hear about, like raised beds and square foot gardening, basically amount to upping the watering.

I don't disagree but the FA does say: "In Australia, where gardeners have grappled with droughts for a decade, aquaponics is particularly appealing because it requires 80 to 90 percent less water than traditional growing methods."

I didn't imply this in particular is water inefficient, just that it's probably inefficient in some way.

I suppose this system really amounts to scrap food recycling. You're feeding the fish various waste organic material that was already grown on a real farm.

The real question is probably: why not just feed it to pigs or goats, the traditional solution? Older folks tell me it was common for there to be residential garbage pickup, separate from trash. The garbage would be taken to farms.

We still have the in-ground iron slop bucket in our backyard. It has been filled with dirt, but the neighbor who has worked in this neighborhood since the 1940s (he's black, so back in the day he couldn't live here, but as a kid he pulled the white ladies' groceries in his wagon for tips), said that the farmers would contract for the slop and pick it up on a regular schedule.

> The real question is probably: why not just feed it to pigs or goats, the traditional solution?

The fish are hungry, that's why not. Aquaponics takes care of the fish waste and plant food, but there is still the question of fish food. Nom nom.

Ah, that's the point of aquaponics. While the plants are watered more than typical planting, the water is conserved and enriched naturally in the fish tank.

Since most raised bed gardening methods I am aware of tend to decrease water usage I am wondering where you are getting this "upping the watering" notion. Any citations perhaps?

I've heard of at least one large-scale system outside of Guadalajara: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1zv_TUTbGY

It seems funny to presume that our large-scale food industry is any better at operating in an efficient and economical manner than any other established industry. Computer industry? Up-ended by garage hackers. Music industry? Up-ended by dorm room hackers. It seems reasonable to think that enough people experimenting with agriculture can do the same thing.

If you dig into the Backyard Aquaponics forums, there are plenty of people who are producing more fish and vegetables than they know what to do with, working only in their off hours.

This should just link to the guys youtube channel, really neat stuff. http://www.youtube.com/user/web4deb

Never thought I'd see this on HN.

If you want a better place to check out what I guess you would call "fish hackers" are doing visit:

http://www.diyaquaponics.com/

Lots of very cool stuff there. I have no connection with it. Aquaponics has always just fascinated me.

So do the fish just eat the plants growing in the tank? Or are they fed human table scraps?

Edit: Feeding habits - Talapia feed primarily on plankton and small organisms living in or on bottom detritus; most common foods in the wild are detritus, algae, diatoms, and plant material. Age and growth - Grow rapidly for first few months, then slow somewhat but ultimately reach 5-6 pounds by age 3-5 yrs; fish weighing 2-4 pounds common; males being larger at each age than females.

I think this is a great example of what pg wrote about in "The Power of the Marginal".

Link: http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html

I aslo like the quote from the article:

“There’s alternate ways of growing food,” he said. “I don’t want to push it down people’s throats, but if someone’s interested, I’d like to show them you can do this with cheap parts and a little bit of Yankee ingenuity.”

a little snippet in the article about potentially building residential verticals/blocks with this kind of technology built in. now that would be ... tasty.

This is really cool. I wonder if something like this could be used to supply food for space travelers.

I wouldn't doubt it; and I'd bet it would also work for apartment buildings. This is incredible -- where do the plants even get the energy to grow 347 cherry tomatoes in a year?

This would be a heck of a lot better for the environment, too, than the mess we've currently made of agriculture -- huge quantities of fertilizer producing algae-laden dead zones in the Caribbean. A flexible government not beholden to farm lobbies would subsidize this immediately.

Grow sugarcane in it, and we'd even have energy independence from Saudi Arabia! :)

You can grow a tremendous amount of food in a relatively small space. Square foot gardening is a good example of this (http://www.squarefootgardening.com/). The trick is in crop selection - if you grow things that do well near each other you end up with fantastic yields. The common example is the "3 sisters" method of growing - melons + corn + beans, for example. The melons provide a shade canopy at the soil level, the corn grows tall so it gets enough sun and the beans use the corn stalks as a trellis.

Of course, this isn't a method that scales up at all; machines can't be used in harvesting since you have mixed crops everywhere. Arguably they wouldn't be so necessary for community gardens though.

melons -> squash, at least for the traditional meaning.

Ah, you're absolutely right - that should say squash, not melons.

I hate to always be the person to ask for things, but does anyone have good resources on how to get started with this kind of stuff?

From the second page of the article: http://www.fastonline.org/images/manuals/Aquaculture/Aquapon...

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