My aquaponics experiment

In my post indoctrination period of my life I've stumbled across aquaponics.

Aquaponics as defined by wikipedia -  is a sustainable food production system that combines conventional aquaculture, (raising aquatic animals such as snails, fish, crayfish, or prawns in tanks), with hydroponics (cultivating plants in water) in a symbiotic environment.

I wanted to try out this sustainable system.  I came across many different kinds of systems.  Some large.



Some small.



I came across this one that is a do it yourself kinda system and it ran about 70 bucks and was even up on kickstarter.com to try and get funding.



I was bummed cause I did not want to fork out 70 bucks for this experiment so I ghetto hacked that ish!

Fish $.10-.20 I want to say.  Bowl $2-3 at the local thrift store.  Organic seeds $2.  Fish's name is Maher-shalal-hash-baz by the way.

Black potter thingys from walmart that I cut down to fit inside the fish bowl $3.  Fish bowl rocks $2-3.

Wire that the wife had laying around for craft stuff $0.  I simply laced/crisscrossed the wire under the black potters and down underneath the bowl in a crisscrossed fashion.  I then did a wire band using the same wire around the lip of the bowl to help it stay in place and I also taped the wire underneath the bowl so it wouldn't move around.

My coworkers contributed huge bags of leftover fish food for free so I've got fish food seriously for several years now.

I placed the seeds in the rocks about a quarter inch down and filled the bowl up to about that point too.  Those mothers sprouted on the third day I believe when the package said they'd sprout on day 7-10.  What is nice about the whole system is that it is extremely low maintenance.  Honest I haven't changed the water in months lol.  I just add more water to it once the lettuce sucks it up and the rest evaporates.  

Its nice to have this low maintenance thing when your lazy.  How lazy?  Well this is what happens when you have to actually water your plants when they aren't already just sitting in water and getting fertilized by the fish.

Yikes.  This kitchen herb (or as my father-in-law likes to say HER-b) never stood a chance against the ravages of my laziness.

So my thoughts/prognosis on aquaponics?  Definite yes.  I'll scale it up one day once I've got a bigger place of my own.  Yes I have tried the lettuce and it is indeed very lettucy.  It was funny cause I originally had this thing sitting on my desk at work and people would get grossed out and ask how I could eat it cause wouldn't it have that sh*t all over it from the fish and I'd say that it didn't have any more of it than the vegetables that you eat that are fertilized on the big farms with cow/horse/chicken manure ground into the dirt and that gets kicked up onto your plant when rain hits the ground and splatters that crap on your lettuce there.  At least here I don't have poop flying everywhere.  

So there you go.  I'm an aquaponics master/guru.  Hey...I ought to do a course on Udemy.com about this......