THE AQUAPONIC CHALLENGE An Orginal Article By Joel Malcolm
An important factor when producing food in an urban environment is space. Not all of us have the luxury of large areas to grow food, so I've become focused on trying to maximize production in small areas. As backyards get smaller and smaller our options for growing fresh food dwindle and we become more inclined to buy our food rather than grow it ourselves.
As many of you probably already know, I've spend many years experimenting with different aquaponic systems, producing fresh fish and vegetables in recirculating systems in my backyard. I guess I'm lucky because I have a 700 sqm house block and a reasonably large back yard where I've been able to build my systems, lots of room for playing. Now a days I see that people with even smaller blocks than mine are subdividing into two house blocks, that leaves very little area to have even the smallest vegetable garden let alone an aquaponics system to produce fish as well as vegetables.
The big flood and drain system that I built a couple of years ago sits in an area of 32sqm, and is fairly inefficient at utilizing the space that it occupies, and many people don't have 32sqm of land to set up an extravagant aquaponics system. Also the cost of a system that's constructed with custom grow beds and fish tanks can make a system like this prohibitive to many in terms of cost and availability of materials. I wanted to try and design and make a system that's more accessible to most people, one that's more suited to smaller yards, smaller pockets, and more environmentally friendly.
Posted by earthbound
on June 07 2006 23:37:11 ·
14 Comments ·
4799 Reads ·
foreston June 08 2006 04:46:10
What a challenge! I love that you're using recycled materials. It will be interesting to see how this developes.
Spriteon June 08 2006 07:05:52
What a fantastic idea Joel...you are an "ideas man"!!
I'm looking forward to the next instalment!!
Lollyon June 08 2006 23:33:12
Thanks for the pics.. I'm NEVER able to fully understand something until I see something visual. It looks great and I can't wait until Ray and I can set up a system of our own. Funny thing is, I made a suggestion about "going up" just the other day. We didn't get much of a chance to think it out, and now we won't have to cos you're doing it for us! Onya mate!! hehe
kimbleon June 09 2006 11:12:32
This system interests me more than any of your systems so far. I love the idea of a self contained (as much as possible) micro aquatic environment, producing food for itself and for you.
Have you considered solar powering the pump?
earthboundon June 10 2006 11:03:44
Thanks for the comments...
Ultimately I want to make it solar/wind powered, unfortunately I don't know if I'll be able to justify the cost of the equipment to do it though. What I may do, is run it via a couple of batteries fed through a trickle chrger plugged into the mains, and an inverter.
Once it's all finished I'll know how big the pump will be, and how much power it's going to consume, maybe I will be able to make it totally self supporting, but those solar panels are damn expensive for just an experiment....
One of our neighbours at Frog Song Farm is very interested in our Aquaponics plans and has already seen your book and DVD when I went over for a cuppa a while ago.
We sat down and watched the DVD and he mentioned that he had seen a "Land Line" program that was also about aquaponics (or possibly about Aquaculture?) so he is following everything we are doing with great interest.
He grows grapes and presses his own wine on his farm and has several different tanks both for grape storage and for wine storage...we have both been examining the possibilities of using these for both fish tanks and grow beds.
One of the best things he has shown me so far for use as a fish tank is a bin for collecting grapes. They are of heavy duty plastic, measure approx 1m x 1m and are maybe 800mm high complete with their own pre-moulded carry handles. I would estimate they probably hold around 1000 ltrs at a rough guess.
I'm seriously looking at the idea of burying one of these maybe 80% into the ground and then stacking two layers of grow beds at either end...funnily enough...exactly what you have built...I had even planned to use the blue barrels cut in half!!
The grape bins apparently cost $350.00 each.
One other idea we had though relates to the plastic tanks that come in the metal cages (as shown in your picture above)...sorry...I don't know what they are called.
We had the idea of stacking them on top of each other as a possible fish storage idea...any possibilities you can see in that?
Cheers
Ray
ShellBelleon August 08 2006 13:46:59
Im very interested in this idea but have recently bought my beloved a boat and she is mad keen on fishing ( which means I have no need of fish ). What other water animals can be grown- crabs, oysters, prawns etc?
red_swirlon September 21 2006 13:20:03
Really good challenge Joel, having lived in a variety of innercity / small houses, i reckon every one of them would have fitted a system like you're designing
Christopheron December 04 2007 14:57:16
Dr J, what happened to the next installment? Enquiring minds need to know!
Doblyon December 06 2007 18:08:26
Looks great and a nicely efficient use of space.. I too look forward to the next installment.
Just wondering if one would need council approval for a structure like that in a suburban backyard. Would differ between councils for sure. But I reckon there would be those councils who have a problem with it.
What do you think?
jilly_rayon December 21 2007 14:26:16
jilly_ray
I am very interested in aquaculture.
I just recently attended a workshop with Nick Romanowski ( author of ten books or so) His last one on Sustainable aquaculture.
He is having another tour of his wetland nursery and setup in Forrest Vic. He is at dragonflyaquatics@hotmail.com or through perm. institute. Cheers jill
kerrynqon March 24 2008 17:01:38
wow - is there an update to this post?
lovebugson May 14 2009 22:03:08
I know this is an old thread so I just thought I could add an updated link to exactly what has been keeping Joel busy
www.backyardaquaponics.com
An important factor when producing food in an urban environment is space. Not all of us have the luxury of large areas to grow food, so I've become focused on trying to maximize production in small areas. As backyards get smaller and smaller our options for growing fresh food dwindle and we become more inclined to buy our food rather than grow it ourselves.
