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On 6/14/2011 at 2:37 PM, gadget said:

Aquaponics is even better than hydroponics! Raise fish and grow plants at the same time.

On 4/2/2013 at 7:39 AM, anatess said:

I had great luck with hydroponics that I'm preparing an aquaponics system. I'm hoping to get an 8x10 greenhouse built by September on the side of the house. I'm going to try to raise tilapia which will provide the fertilizer for the plants. The plants will be on pea gravel on the grow bed with red wrigglers to convert fish poop and dead roots/leaves into vermicompost. The grow bed will act as the bio-filter for the fish tank to keep the fish water clean, so it's a closed loop circuit. Completely organic.

Ecoponics (I invented this, although others may have hit upon the same plan), is even better than aquaponics. It is more efficient of land, of water, of energy, labor, and nutritional inputs. Fish need to eat, but they can convert feed to edible fish at only about a 30% (high end) ratio.

This system uses feed more effectively, because we feed rabbits first. They feed (indirectly) the fish. Then the fish feed the plants. We get rabbits, fish and fruit'n'vegetables out for ourselves.

I installed a 10'x12' greenhouse from Harbor Freight. But it is unlike any other One Step™ greenhouse out there. It's probably unlike any other greenhouse, anywhere.

It's hard to describe, but I'll give it a go:

First, it's the only greenhouse I know of with a basement. We live in Colorado, and winters are harsh. We see temps fall to -20°F (-32°C), sometimes for several nights in a row. This means that there is no possibility for growing tilapia outside. So, our greenhouse sits above a 6½' deep pit. (If I were to do it again, I'd make it 8½' deep.) In the back of the basement, there is another pit, hand dug, this one 2½' square, and ten feet deeper than the bottom of the basement itself. The whole thing is concrete walls and floors, insulated from the surrounding earth. This keeps the water temp at 55°F (25°C) year 'round. We have to add heat, but it's a lot less than what would be required otherwise. It also gives us vertical growing space, again, below. The basement is the fish tank. It's filled with two-to-three feet of water. Tilapia jump, so we covered it with the floor (see below) and the rabbit waste system (also below) to keep them where we can harvest them.

The pit (or "well") is for the pump mechanism. I covered it with a grate made of ⅝" rebar, welded in two pieces that hinge so we can remove it when necessary. This grid, like the others below, has openings for water piping and air lines. It keeps me from falling into the well when I'm harvesting fish.

Three and a half feet above the bottom of the basement (not the well), there is a grate that serves as a floor. It runs down the center of the building and is only about 3½' wide and goes from the door wall of the greenhouse to about 3' from the back wall. Surrounding this floor are seven rabbit hutches which I built of 1x1" hardware cloth (walls) and 1x½" for the floors. We have four does and a buck with two larger hutches for grow-out pens. Each doe can have eight or ten (we usually go for four) litters (4~7 bunnies) a year. These hang directly under the grow beds (see below), leaving a fair amount of vertical space below them to clean out their waste.

Waste is a big issue. We have not done it yet, but next summer, we will be using red wrigglers and black soldier fly larvae to clean it up for us. That will reduce our work from cleaning the rabbitry every other week to about once a month, and even then, the work will be a fraction of what we do now.

Black Soldier Flies barely deserve the name “fly” because they don't really fly much at all. They have no mouth parts (adults do not eat: their energy comes from their larval eating), and and serve only one function: to mate and (for the females) lay eggs. A male might fly 10 yards in his lifetime, a female 20. They do not spread any disease, and they are shy: no buzzing around your head. But their offspring are tremendous eaters. They eat anything dead, except hair and bone. A bin full of BSF larvae will eat a 10” trout (cooked or raw) in less than 10 hours. They love rabbit poop, and they love coffee grounds (as do red wrigglers). Starbucks never gets any of my money, but they are a source of free fertility for our garden, and, next year, for our fish.

The larvae also have an interesting “feature” that makes them ideal for this. When they're ready to pupate, they want to get out of the mess they've been feeding on for the past few weeks. To do so, they look for an inclined plan (30° is ideal). They expect to drop onto the ground below a tree trunk, but if that drop sends them into my fishtank, they're happy (until one of the fish eats it). Each female lays 300~3,000 eggs, so the supply is very, very large.

The larvae are extremely good at converting their food into body mass. And that mass is 28% protein and 43% fat. Both are great for fish. (It's even good for people, but I haven't even considered eating them. Your choice may vary.)

The extra distance above the fish tank I recommend would allow a “continuous flow” system for harvesting worm and larvae castings, rather than our batch system. As it is, we have to lift bins (from HD or Lowe's) over the lip of a wooden tray: again pressure treated, impregnated, and painted. The flow-through system would be very different, but no time to explain it now.

The hutches hang from the grow beds. I built these from 2x12” boards, three glued'n'screwed together to make a beam to support the weight of everything (the floors, the growbeds, the rabbits, everything), and singles for the other sides and ends. Above those (about 2'3"), I built another set. This second floor is only a single 2x12” along all four sides. Between the two lower beds, I used rafter hangers to support a “wicking bed” at the back of the greenhouse for our lemon tree and (we hope) pineapples. It's about 3' square, but 23” tall. Again, the material is 2x12” lumber. All the wood was pressure treated, then impregnated with epoxy, and painted with blue, then white, liquid rubber. (I do not want to do this again.)

The lower growbeds also have a grate floor we use to access the upper beds. They lie on ledges between the beds. We use HF magnetic tool holders to keep them out of the way when we're not walking on them. When we need to plant or harvest from the top bank, we put them down and walk on them. In the winter, we put carpet samples on this floor to help keep heat in for the animals and fish. (There is also a "swimming pool cover" (looks like heavy-duty bubble wrap) we use to insulate the greenhouse itself . In the summer, we cover the greenhouse with shade cloth. It can get really hot inside.)

Each 11'9”x 2½' growbed is divided into three sections. The weight of the water (had we used a single section) would have collapsed the whole thing. Not a good plan. Each section in the upper growbeds fills independently of the others, and drains (by siphon) into the bed below it. This then drains (again, by siphon) back into the fish tank.

We have about 120sqft of growing space for plants and have successfully grown tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, stevia, squash, chards, kales, beets, and others. (I'm toying with a way to grow sweet potatoes, but that's for another time.) Fruit is also an option: strawberries are among the best choices, but blueberries will grow here, too.

System.JPG.5c117f18251b886af84aacaa13268

Pumping water is hard work, and it would cost more than anyone can justify without Glenn Martinez's (olomanagardens.com) “burper” pump. That's why the 10' deep well. It runs on a small air pump and lifts 150~200 gallons per hour the 14' needed to fill the grow beds. Check his web site for details. He has dozens of ways to move water uphill, and this one is not the most efficient. But it is the one that will fit into our system.

We will also be installing solar panels and a backup battery (NiFe, not lead-acid) to run it at night and during power outages. But that's another upgrade for another time.

It looks like this, in terms of conversion:

100 lbs of rabbit feed gives us about 10 lbs of rabbit meat and 85 pounds of rabbit waste. The worms and larvae change that to about 30 lbs of body mass and 5 pounds of their waste (fertilizer). The fish change the 30 pounds of worms and larvae into about 10 lbs of fried fish.

The plants use the fish waste to turn it into about 25 pounds of tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, sweet potatoes, and so on.

We get about 65 pounds of food from 100 lbs of feed (the feed-to-food ratio), which is very, very good.

The cost is high: I estimate that over the years, we've spent $25,000 on the building and all the parts. It will never pay for itself. But, when Kroger can't fill its shelves, we'll be eating fresh tomatoes and fried rabbit while our neighbors are eating freeze-dried soybeans.

Lehi

Edited by LeSellers
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This is awesome!  It would be even more awesome if you have pictures.

 

For your water temps, you would do very well with Rainbow Trout instead of Tilapia.  It might save you some heating bills.

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This is awesome!

You are very kind to say so. thank you.

 

It would be even more awesome if you have pictures.

We'll be doing something like that, when we have it all running the way we want it.

 

For your water temps, you would do very well with Rainbow Trout instead of Tilapia.  It might save you some heating bills.

The species of fish has always been a problem for aquapons: energy to heat the water v. feed-to-food conversion. I suspect we'll go back and forth over the coming years.

Tilapia have their upsides and their downsides: I don't really like to butcher them: way too bony. But they are easy to kill: just pop 'em in a tub of ice water: POOF! they're dead. No blood, no hitting them in the head, just toss 'em in.

But, they are easy to use: their bland flavor (tastes like chicken) makes them easy to present to people. You can spice 'em, dice 'em, slice 'em, or just bake 'em.

Lehi

Edited by LeSellers
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  • 2 months later...

One of our older sons just called, asking me more about ecoponics, and, especially if I would write a book (a specialty of mine) and do a web site.

He says that he's told 100 people about it, and that there must be many more who would benefit from this effort. I'd like to do it, but I do not want to waste any time and other resources on it, so here's the question:

Do you think that enough people would be interested to justify the several hundred hours I'd need to make this happen?

Thanks for your assistance,

Lehi

Edited by LeSellers
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Yes, I believe so. But it would be worth reviewing to see what's already available so that you avoid rewriting what someone else has already done a good job of getting down on paper, or at least write it in a better (more accessible or whatever) way.

Since I invented "ecoponics", there isn't much out there, but it does represent a melding of several technologies that hasn't been done before (as far as I can tell).

The rough outline is an introduction (much like what is in the first message above), followed by chapters on the integration of each of the rabbit, fish, worms-BFSs, and plants.

Then, because each situation would be different, I'd include chapters on the mechanical devices, the greenhouse, the grow beds, the burper air lift pumps, and the siphons.

I don't know quite how to make it all available, but a PFD download jumps to mind, although my previous entries into self-publishing this kind of thing (how to get out of debt fast without destroying your family) I did on paper.

In any case, thanks a lot for your input. And I hope others will chime in.

At least this is not too controversial.

Lehi

Edited by LeSellers
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One of our older sons just called, asking me more about ecoponics, and, especially if I would write a book (a specialty of mine) and do a web site.

He says that he's told 100 people about it, and that there must be many more who would benefit from this effort. I'd like to do it, but I do not want to waste any time and other resources on it, so here's the question:

Do you think that enough people would be interested to justify the several hundred hours I'd need to make this happen?

Thanks for your assistance,

Lehi

 

Lehi, I'm not into this sort of thing at all, but even I was interested in your write-up. 

 

By all means, carry on!  :)

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Since I invented "ecoponics", there isn't much out there, but it does represent a melding of several technologies that hasn't been done before (as far as I can tell).

The rough outline is an introduction (much like what is in the first message above), followed by chapters on the integration of each of the rabbit, fish, worms-BFSs, and plants.

Then, because each situation would be different, I'd include chapters on the mechanical devices, the greenhouse, the grow beds, the burper air lift pumps, and the siphons.

I don't know quite how to make it all available, but a PFD download jumps to mind, although my previous entries into self-publishing this kind of thing (how to get out of debt fast without destroying your family) I did on paper.

In any case, thanks a lot for your input. And I hope others will chime in.

At least this is not too controversial.

Lehi

 

Lehi!  You gotta do it!

 

If you do it and have some blurb on how to adjust the system to a tropical climate with year-round temps that range between 70 and 90F and a rainfall average of 2 inches from Jan-May and 6 inches from Jun-Dec, I would take the write up and show it to my uncle in the Philippines so we can make it a town experiment to fight hunger.

 

If my husband will okay it and the BSA allows it, I'll see if one of my boys can do an Eagle Project on it.

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Lehi!  You gotta do it!

 

If you do it and have some blurb on how to adjust the system to a tropical climate with year-round temps that range between 70 and 90F and a rainfall average of 2 inches from Jan-May and 6 inches from Jun-Dec, I would take the write up and show it to my uncle in the Philippines so we can make it a town experiment to fight hunger.

 

If my husband will okay it and the BSA allows it, I'll see if one of my boys can do an Eagle Project on it.

There's a lot of information on tropical and semi-tropical aquaponics out there. The University of the Virgin Islands is a major player in the field.

Another person you would want to contact is Glenn Martinez. He's not an ecopon, but he did invent the burper airlift pump I use. He loves doing this kind of thing in the Philipines for schools, orphanages, and similar groups. He's at olomonagardens.com, on Oahu.

Rabbits live all over the world, but I don't know about native Filipino breeds. I might need information from you on that.

An Eagle project! Wow!

 

Lehi, I'm not into this sort of thing at all, but even I was interested in your write-up. 

 

By all means, carry on!  :)

You are very kind to say so.

Lehi

Edited by LeSellers
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There's a lot of information on tropical and semi-tropical aquaponics out there. The university of the Virgin Islands is a major player in the field.

Rabbits live all over the world, but I don't know about native Filipino breeds. I might need information from you on that.

An Eagle project! Wow!

You are very kind to say so.

Lehi

 

Rabbits are not indigenous to the Philippines.  Rabbit meat farming is relatively new to the country (I believe the first commercial farm started in 2012 in Northern Philippines) and there's some resistance in the market for rabbit meat because people think rabbits are imported pets (like celebrity pets) that are cute and cuddly and deliver Easter Eggs.

 

Currently, the commercial farm is experimenting on California and New Zealand breeds with the first stock being imported from Australia.  They started selling to high-end restaurants last year but has not penetrated the local meat markets outside of their town yet.  Some local backyard farmers in Cebu are working with Fleming Giants.  Rabbit production is lesser in hot climates so they're trying to find the balance between meat production and feed in Philippine climate.

 

My town is trying to get in on this program to educate people about the benefits of rabbit meat and its potential for backyard farming.  Tilapia farms have been very popular there for over a century.  But aquaponics is also a new thing that just started in the Philippines in 2012.  Hydroponic lettuce has been in the Philippines a while - with a commercial farmer getting big enough to export lettuce about 5 years ago.

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Rabbits are not indigenous to the Philippines.  Rabbit meat farming is relatively new to the country

Unfortunately, people will starve rather than eat things they're not familiar with.

As I said, rabbits will grow almost anywhere (except Antarctica), but the right breed could make all the difference. I prefer a smaller animal, the Florida White, to its larger cousins, the California or New Zealand because it has a slightly better feed-to-food ratio (amount of feed it takes to produce a pound or kilo of edible meat).

 

My town is trying to get in on this program to educate people about the benefits of rabbit meat and its potential for backyard farming.  Tilapia farms have been very popular there for over a century.  But aquaponics is also a new thing that just started in the Philippines in 2012.  Hydroponic lettuce has been in the Philippines a while - with a commercial farmer getting big enough to export lettuce about 5 years ago.

The Church has or had a program to introduce rabbits to protein-poor communities. My Jacquie and I are trying to figure out how to serve a service mission to teach what we know about this. Unfortunately, our practical skills are rudimentary, at best. And I ain't gettin' much younger.

Lehi

Edited by LeSellers
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  • 3 weeks later...

I like your 65% "feed-to-food" ratio. It occurs to me that the elements of that ratio are actually measuring two different things. Measuring the dehydrated weight of your produced foods against the feed amount might be more accurate.

If we assume that the meat and veggies are 80% water (a reasonable rough guess), that takes the ratio to 0.2 x 0.65 = 0.13 = 13% edible food derived from feed. Obviously, if your feed is edible for people, it is vastly more efficient just to eat it. But if your bunnies are grazing for the most part, then it becomes a way for you to convert inedible food into edible (and tasty) food.

I find it fascinating. I would love to read a book about it. Your writeup was very good. Have you looked at all at AnAmericanHomestead.com? Their site and Roku TV channel introduced me to aquaponics. You may already know significantly more than they do, but I bet you would enjoy perusing their site and watching their vids.

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10 hours ago, Vort said:

I like your 65% "feed-to-food" ratio. It occurs to me that the elements of that ratio are actually measuring two different things. Measuring the dehydrated weight of your produced foods against the feed amount might be more accurate.

That's always a problem, but it is "standard", so people understand it without a lot of explanation.

Yes, the water weight of the "food" portion should really be deducted for an apples-to-apples comparison, but since there are a lot of things to measure (rabbit, fish, and vegetables/fruits), that calculation must wait for another time.

10 hours ago, Vort said:

I find it fascinating. I would love to read a book about it. Your writeup was very good. Have you looked at all at AnAmericanHomestead.com? Their site and Roku TV channel introduced me to aquaponics. You may already know significantly more than they do, but I bet you would enjoy perusing their site and watching their vids.

Always glad to share others' experiences, 'cuz no one knows it all.

Thanks for the plaudits. (Just for grins, did the illustration help understand the concept?)

Lehi

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1 hour ago, LeSellers said:

Thanks for the plaudits. (Just for grins, did the illustration help understand the concept?)

Not for me, because I already understood based on what you wrote. But it did give a nice, concise summary of what you were accomplishing.

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26 minutes ago, Vort said:

Not for me, because I already understood based on what you wrote. But it did give a nice, concise summary of what you were accomplishing.

That's all I could hope for.

Thanks.

Lehi

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