
Aquaponics, a Gardening System Using Fish - mtalantikite
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/garden/18aqua.html?8dpc
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warfangle
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!

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kingkongreveng_
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.

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samt
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."

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kingkongreveng_
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.

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niels_olson
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.

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3dFlatLander
This should just link to the guys youtube channel, really neat stuff.
<http://www.youtube.com/user/web4deb>

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dugmartin
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.

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hop
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.

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nkh
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.”

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

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

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dkimball
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! :)

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icey
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.

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

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

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skolor
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?

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koanarc
From the second page of the article:
[http://www.fastonline.org/images/manuals/Aquaculture/Aquapon...](http://www.fastonline.org/images/manuals/Aquaculture/Aquaponic_Information/barrelponics_manual.pdf)

