Off Grid Homestead Aquaponics
by
An American Homestead
(IC: blogger)
We are just getting started this year with aquaponics. Right away, the weakest link with aquaponics is it usually relies on the grid to keep it going. You need electricity to run the pumps that run the system. In our system, all of the electricity comes from 1000 watts worth of solar panels.
The pumps are used to get the water from the fish tanks up to the flood tanks. From there, gravity does the rest of the work. The water in the flood tank reaches a certain level which engages a flapper valve like the one found in most toilets today. The water flows down out of the flood tank and into a manifold system that empties into the grow beds. The water fills the grow beds and then empties out into a guttering system that returns the water back into the fish tanks below. It’s a simple and efficient design.
As a homesteader with a mind towards being a survivalist, I really wanted to maximize our efforts in growing food. Aquaponics helps us do that. A mature system can grow a lot of food very fast. What is a mature system? Maturity comes with time that allows the bacterial colonies in the grow beds to become established. It’s the bacteria that works to change the ammonia rich fish waste into useable plant food called nitrates.
At some point, we will build a breeding program for the fish so we don’t have to purchase them. Right now, blue gill fingerlings are selling for about 0.40 each and they are about 2-3 inches long when we get them.
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Published August 10th, 2014 11:32 AM
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Cindy on Jun 30, 2020
Lovely aquaponics DIY!
To anyone else that might wonder, there are only a couple of build-it-yourself aquaponics system guides that I would recommend, and Aquaponics 4 You by John Fay, a Certified Organic Farmer and Aquaponics Expert, is one of them 👌
It’s a written manual and video that shows you the step-by-step process of building a simple and fully functional aquaponics system for under $400 (a heck of a lot cheaper than buying a pre-made system from the shops). Good luck 🙂
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