You can turn any aquarium into an Aquaponics System

A while back, we did a post showing this area of the Growroom when we had just set up this aquarium to work as our Tilapia nursery. In that earlier post, the aquarium was just an aquarium with the traditional aquarium filter on the left corner filtering out the fish waste toxins. However, our adult Tilapia in the big 320 gallon tank in this Growroom are so happy with their 80 degree plus degree water and their Tilapia Nesting Condos that they started mating like crazy and produced about 400 offspring, which you can see in this aquarium.

There were now too many fish for the little aquarium filter to handle. So what do you do when you want to house a lot more fish in an aquarium than the filter can handle? You turn the aquarium into a Mini Aquaponics System. We went to Home Depot and bought this 7″ deep black, 5 gallon mixing tray, which we turned into a Grow Bed. We filled it with hydroton, plumbed it and planted lettuce seedlings into it. WALA! A Tilapia Nursery as a Mini Aquaponics System.

The next thing you have to figure out is how much to feed these little guys to keep the system stable. We started out over feeding them; and when we did our water quality measurements, we had way too much ammonia in the system. In fact, the ammonia was so high it was almost lethal. Now, one of the great things about Tilapia is they are so hardy, which makes them capable of withstanding those kinds of mistakes so not one of them died. Tilapia are also gill sifters so they are getting a lot of their nutrition from the algae that naturally forms in the water and on the tank. We are feeding them the #O FAST GROWTH TILAPIA FISH FOOD that we sell on our website and we’re giving them l tsp. a day.

As we prepare to leave for Tucson for five days to assemble and install the three systems in three elementary schools, what do we do about our Greenhouse and

Growroom? We lock the doors and let the systems take care of themselves. We are so confident about the technology behind our Food Forever™ Growing Systems that we can actually leave them unattended for five days without worry. We have automatic fish feeders on all five of our tanks so our fish won’t even notice we’re gone; and because you recirculate the water continuously, we don’t need to add any to the system over a five day period.

Raising baby Tilapia and Lettuce in a Mini Aquaponics System

So off we go. We’ll be bringing back lots of pictures of our adventures in the Tucson school installation and Phoenix where we’ll be picking up our 6,000 watts of solar panels for our next big “Getting Off The Grid” project.

Continue to have a healthy and happy Holiday Season.

Love, Grace

These are the Grow Beds that will be teaching elementary school children in Tucson how to grow veggies aquaponically.

Tucson! We're on our way.

Here are some pictures of the components of our FFGS-40 systems that are going into three elementary schools in Tucson Arizona. We’re going to be glad to load these Food Forever™ Growing System components into the U-Haul truck tomorrow so we can move again in our manufacturing facility, which, right now is full of Grow Beds, Fish Tanks, Stands, Tables, Step Stools, Fish Nets, Fish Food, Water Rings, Plumbing and a lot of other parts that make up three FFGS-40 Growing Systems with three extra 120 gallon Fish Tanks.

This project is being lead by Zotero Citlalcoatl the School & Community Garden Program Coordinator of the Community Food Resource Center of the Community Food Bank and the Tucson AquaPonics Project. The Tucson AquaPonics Project is an “open-source, non-profit, community supported training and resource organization designed to help individuals and communities achieve Food Freedom and Food Security”.  The Tucson AquaPonics Project has a new website and is a great place to make an end of the year donation. Tucson appears to be way ahead of the curve when it comes to innovative ways to grow food and create a sustainable community food program; and we are so pleased that Zotero decided to choose our systems for his elementary school aquaponics projects.

Schools of Tilapia in three elementary schools in Tucson.

We’re going to be shooting stills of the trip and the step by step assembly process of each of these systems in the three different schools; and we’ll also be making videos of this adventure to show on our Aquaponics USA TV Channel.

Once we complete the delivery and assembly of our Food Forever™ Growing Systems in Tucson, we’ll be going to Phoenix to pick up a pallet of solar panels from Sun Electric, a reputable solar company there. We’re getting 30 two hundred watt panels for a total of 6,000 watts, which we’ll be using to run our house, our greenhouse and our growroom in the near future. Eat your heart out, Edison. We’ll also be blogging about that early 2012 project under our Getting Off The Grid category so watch for those posts.

So many projects, so little time; and one hour before Christmas dinner.

You can almost watch it grow

Merry Christmas 2011, Everyone! Hope you’re having a special day with friends and family.

Our Turkey’s on and I have a little time to post this amazing picture of our Humble Seed Black Seeded Simpson and Red Oak Lettuce, which will be the corner stone of our Christmas dinner salad tonight. During the 12 Days Before Christmas, since December 13th, when we posted our last picture of our Humble Seed Lettuce, this lettuce has grown almost up to our grow lights.

It's almost touching the grow lights.

Before heading off to Houston last week to see children and grandchildren, we made our first Humble Seed Black Seeded Simpson salad; and it was really delicious. The lettuce was really crisp and tasty so our experiment to see how well Humble Seed Lettuce grows in an aquaponics system has been completed with glowing results.

But as I explained in my last post, we’re going to have to run another test on our Humble Seed Romaine Lettuce because our LED Grow Lights have turned out to be a disappointment. The lights are not growing the Romaine Lettuce varieties we planted at all. That Grow Bed is a wimpy, wispy shadow of what a Grow Bed full of Romaine Lettuce should look like by now. We’ve found another source for LED’s and will be running another test on our Humble Seed Romaine Lettuce soon.

When you're in the Lab, things sometimes go wrong.

In the picture below, you’re seeing the back side of our Grow Bed #3 with the Humble Seed Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce growing in it. Above the Grow Bed, mounted to the wall is one of the three air circulating fans we added about two weeks ago. We believe these fans have helped our Lettuce grow and thicken as much as they have in the last 12 days.

It's important to keep the air circulating in an enclosed growroom.

Our Water Heater and the stainless steel ring that’s double wrapped around the inside bottom of the 320 gallon fish tank is working really well to both heat the water and the room. The water is staying right around 80 degrees F; and the room stays around 78 degrees F right through below freezing nights. It’s so humid in this Growroom, I have to shoot these pictures really fast before the camera lens fogs up.

The only metal you can use in an aquaponics system is stainless steel.

Our 320 gallon fish tank is 81 degrees, which is perfect for breeding.

It’s time to get back to preparing Christmas dinner. Enjoy the Holidays. There are many more interesting posts coming in the very near future as we’re off to Tucson AZ tomorrow to install three of our Food Forever™ Growing Systems in three Tucson elementary schools. We’ll be posting all about it so stay tuned.

Thanks for Visiting, Grace

Humble Seed Red Oak and Blk Seeded Simpson Lettuce growing in Grow Bed #3

On November 20th, we created a post with pictures of me (Grace) planting seedlings into our aquaponics growroom grow beds. These are pictures of those grow beds 23 days later. The above picture is Grow Bed #3 with two kinds of Humble Seed Lettuce planted in it. The front row is called Red Oak and the back rows are the popular Black Seeded Simpson lettuce by Humble Seed. These two varieties are really doing well in our aquaponics grow beds.

However, had we given them the proper amount of light and put lots of moving air on them from the beginning, they would be doing even better.

About a week ago, we had an esteemed guest whose name is Zotero Citlalcoatl.  Zotero coordinates a gardening cooperative for schools & community organizations for the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona. He is purchasing three systems just like the one in our growroom, which will be placed in three elementary schools in Tucson; and, “Yes”, we’re really thrilled that is happening. Zotero is a walking, talking encyclopedia of plant knowledge; and we learned a lot from his visit as we taught him how to set up and maintain an aquaponics system. I’ll be doing another post soon showing you our new LED lights and our three newly installed fans that keep the air circulating nicely in the growroom.

So besides not having circulating air in our new growroom, we also didn’t have enough lighting to allow our first grow out of lettuce to become thick and bushy. Right around December 1st, we added two more fluorescent lights to the lighting array; and started running the lights 24 hrs. a day  instead of 16 hrs. a day. That means we need to do another test with the same Humble Seed Lettuce starting from seedlings again after this batch grows out. I’m thinking that in 23 days, we’ll have lettuce ready to eat.

So that’s the good news about our Humble Seed Lettuce. Unfortunately, there’s also some bad news that has to do with lighting. In that earlier post, Nov. 20th, we showed pictures of Humble Seed Romaine Seedlings in the rock wool cubes that were about to be planted into Grow Bed #4. They were planted under one fluorescent light for the first couple of weeks and were doing well. However, we realized the single light really wasn’t covering the entire bed. We let things stand as we had ordered some LED lights that we were planning to put over that grow bed, which was full of Romaine lettuce from a variety of vendors including Humble Seed.

We got the LED lights, took down the fluorescent light and hung the new LED lights around Dec. 2nd. To our disappointment, none of the Romaine lettuce is growing properly; and today we just found another source for purchasing LED’s. We’re not ready to give up on using LED’s because the savings in utility costs are so great; and we’re feeling confident that this time we’ve found the right company. This was an expensive mistake. Once we get the new LED’s up and plant new seedlings, we’ll be sharing our LED results and the name of the company whose lights actually work. So stay tuned.

And remember, you can watch all this happening on a live webcam on the “Greenhouse” page of our site. Just scroll down to the bottom of the page where you’ll see our tilapia laying on top of their condos and our grow beds growing lettuce. The red hew over the last grow bed, Grow Bed #4, is coming from the LED’s that aren’t giving the Romaine lettuce in that bed what it needs. You can see there is no lettuce visible in the webcam. Although there are whisps of lettuce in the bed–scrawny, leggy, pitiful Romaine lettuce.

Here’s another photo of some Baker Creek Lettuce in Grow Bed #1. The front row is called Big Boston and the back row is Gentilina. They are doing well also; and were growing without enough light during their first two weeks as well.

Baker Creek Big Boston and Gentilina Lettuce growing in Grow Bed #1

Like we said in an earlier post, our growroom is our laboratory; and we’re learning as we grow and growing as we learn and sharing it all with you. In terms of the fluorescents, we now have the right amount of light and are getting nice, full, heads of lettuce. And we’re really thrilled with how well our Humble Seed Lettuce is doing.

You can purchase Humble Seed Kits right on our website at: http://www.aquaponicsusa.com/Aquaponics_USA_Seeds

Seeds make a wonderful Christmas gift for all of those gardening enthusiasts on your list.

Thanks for visiting our Blog. Have a joyful Holiday Season and check back for more great articles about Aquaponics in 2012.

Improving Aquaponics Water Quality
By Oliver

Last weekend while Grace was planting Humble Seed lettuce into our Grow Beds in our new Growroom, I was working on a new water quality device I’ve been designing in my head for a while now when I had the realization that we had turned our Growroom into an Aquaponics Lab. We just installed our first set of LED Grow Lights over Grow Bed #4 where Grace planted Humble Seed Romaine lettuce; and we’re talking about turning one of our Grow Beds into a raft system in which the Grow Bed holds only water and no media like Hydroton. So this new Growroom has definitely become our experimental Aquaponics R & D laboratory; and that feels great as it’s important to always evolve and improve on Aquaponics technology. Having said that, I’d now like to share the particulars of this water quality device I’ve designed; but first, a little background.

In previous Aquaponics 101 posts, I have put forth an Aquaponics system design. This included a simple set-up of a single fish tank and one or more deep media filled grow beds. This design retains all fish waste in the system and, thereby, allows for (and requires) the mineralization of the fish waste solids in the grow beds, which also serve as bio-filters. Some of the advantages of such a design are low maintenance and operational cost, as well as a minimum number of components required to build the system.

In order for this system to properly function, it must meet certain design criteria. It must have an ample bio-filter volume in order to process the delivered fish waste. It must have ample water flow in order to deliver those wastes. It must have water aeration in order for the bacteria to process the fish waste. And, It must have ample grow bed space to grow the plants needed to uptake the produced nitrates.

For a simple backyard Aquaponics system this is all that is required, as long as it is limited to low fish density, which means having about one pound of fish for every five gallons or more of bio-filter/grow bed. This number can be pushed to one pound of fish for every three gallons of bio-filter; but that borders on the edge of instability. Even if the chemistry measures in the safe range, the lowering of pH due to the nitrification process will always require constant (weekly) adjustment by adding a pH-up solution. This solution can be either Potassium Hydroxide (potash) or Calcium Hydroxide (lime).

As mentioned above, the system must have ample aeration. This is necessary in order to create a Dissolved Oxygen (DO) content of 6.0 ppm (mg/L) or higher. This will also help to de-gas the water. More on this below. This DO level can be difficult to achieve by just aerating the fish tank, especially if the water temperature is above 78 degrees F, because the higher water temperature drives out the Oxygen. Additional aeration can be added to the grow beds; but it adds only a small amount of DO to the system water. This is because the depth of the water in the grow beds is minimal, and the air bubbles don’t spend much time in the water. Also, due to the shape of the grow beds, it is difficult to fully aerate them without multiple aeration devices spread throughout their bottoms. Again, this does add some DO to the water but at an equipment and energy cost. But, it may add enough DO to keep the system out of trouble.

Adding additional system components to help improve the water quality is in common usage among commercial aquaculture and Aquaponics growers. In order to understand these added components, we must first understand what need is being addressed by adding them to the system.

Water contains dissolved gasses. In addition to some oxygen in the water, it may contain excesses of Nitrogen, Hydrogen, Methane, CO2, and Hydrogen Sulfide. Some of these gasses are from the process of fish waste being broken down by the bacteria in the system. Hydrogen, for example, is released into the water when autotrophic bacteria break apart Ammonia (NH3) into Hydrogen and Nitrogen. They add Oxygen to the Nitrogen to produce Nitrite (NO2) in its first iteration process and later add another Oxygen atom to produce Nitrate (NO3), which is less toxic to the fish than either Ammonia or Nitrite and beneficial to the plants. The released Hydrogen is then combined with the CarbonDiOxide (CO2) in the water to help produce Carbonic Acid (H2CO3), which is what causes the water’s pH to lower. Carbonic acid is also formed anytime CarbonDiOxide is dissolved in water (CO2+H2O-> H2CO3). The alkaline buffers that may be present in the water initially will keep the pH high; but they will eventually be overwhelmed by the shear amount of Carbonic Acid being produced as the fish density increases when the fish grow out and are fed more food.

Part of the solution to these troublesome gasses in the water is to de-gasify them in a degassing tank. This is usually a rather shallow tank, which the water flows through as air is being pumped in by way of aerators in the tank’s bottom. This degassing operation also adds some aeration to the water.

Before the water gets to the degassing tank, the fish waste solids must be dealt with. There are essentially two ways to deal with these solids, either remove them completely (as best as can be done) or through a process known as mineralization, which is the breaking down of the solids by bacteria. These bacteria are found freely suspended in the water. Often, a combination of removal of the solids and mineralization of the remaining solids are combined in a system design.

Mineralization is accomplished by Heterotrophic bacteria. They, like the Autotrophic bacteria mentioned above, are Aerobic bacteria, meaning they require Oxygen to accomplish their task. Heterotrophic bacteria remain free in the water until they attach themselves to suspended organic matter, like solid fish waste and excess fish food, and convert them into dissolved solids, as well as produce Ammonia. The Ammonia is taken care of by the Autotrophic bacteria in the bio-filter, and they give us even more Nitrates. Again, Aerobic bacteria require and remove Dissolved Oxygen from the system water. The mineralization tank is much like the degassing tank in that it requires aeration to be effective.

We have now added two extra components to the system, a mineralizing tank and a degassing tank. And, if we plan on using Raft, NFT (Nutrient Film Technology) or Aeroponics (the spraying of nutrient rich water onto the plant roots) instead of deep media grow beds to grow our veggies, then we will need to add another component to the system, the bio-filter. It is interesting to see how little attention is paid to the bio-filter in some of the commercial system designs I’ve looked at on the internet. The bio-filter contains media with lots of surface area so the Autotrophic bacteria have a place to live and do their thing of converting the Ammonia to Nitrates. The bio-filter is a container of some sort where the mineralized (or filtered) and degassed water passes through the media; and, if properly designed, aeration devices are added to help with the process and to de-gas the Hydrogen.

So, why go to all of this trouble and expense in adding these components? Well, if you are building a low density backyard system, then they are not necessary. But if your system is a larger higher density one, and you want to get serious about growing large amounts of food (vegetables and fish), then improving your water quality not only makes sense, it is a requirement.

In a media filled grow bed, the addition of the solid fish waste can be problematic. Even though I have advocated for this being done in order to simplify a small low density backyard system, the grow bed is not the ideal place to mineralize the solid waste. It coats the grow bed media making it less usable for the autotrophic bacteria which need the media’s surface for attachment. It can also coat the vegetable roots preventing them from proper uptake of nutrients. As the amount of solid waste increases, this, then, becomes a problem.

If you are growing lettuce or other leafy greens that can be grown in a raft system, growing them in media such as Hydroton takes more time to both transplant and harvest. In our last post, Grace described this process. In a commercial operation, this added time cuts deep into what little profit margin there may be. By using a raft system, the transplanting and harvesting time is greatly reduced.

In order to use a raft growing system, the water must be relatively clean, which means free of solid fish waste that might interfere with the plants’ uptake by coating their roots. This coating would retard their growth requiring more time and thereby adding cost to the yield. Clean water is especially necessary in aeroponics, as the sprayers can otherwise become clogged with solid fish waste.

So, how do we accomplish this water quality improvement without adding a lot of system complexity and cost? One way is to combine as many of these operations into as few components as possible. Think vertical. By using a relatively tall tank (which we refer to as a water tower), say six feet or taller, we can take all of the water from the fish tank pump (it must have enough head and flow to reach six feet or more) and pump it into the bottom of this vertical water tower and remove it near it’s top. By adding aeration devices in the bottom of the tower, the air takes time to cover the distance to the tower’s top, which is vented. On our test tower pictured above, there is an eight inch cap on its very top with a vent hole. We cut a larger hole in this cap and inserted a bulkhead so we could extend the height to prevent water overflow as well as provide a high vent and a place to insert the airline running to the aerators in the bottom of the tower.

About eighteen inches from the tower’s top, we added a bulkhead outlet (as far as we could reach into the tower from the top with the cap removed) where the water is allowed to flow from it into the grow beds. This outlet is well above the height of the grow beds and good flow has been achieved. Each grow bed has its own control valve to adjust the flow into it. About one foot above the grow bed outlet and about six to ten inches from the tower’s top is another outlet (this, along with the bottom inlet, were built into the original tank) where the excess water being pumped in and not flowing into the grow beds is allowed to overflow back into the fish tank(s).

The slow upward movement of the water allows the heavier than water fish waste solids to precipitate. The air from the air stones placed in the tower’s bottom keep the solids suspended. We found that there needs to be a balance in the amount of air that is pushed through the stones; for if there is too much air coming in, then the water becomes less dense and doesn’t flow properly from the outlets near the tank’s top causing an overflow condition, as well as raising the suspended solids too high. As it turns out, we needed a smaller air pump than we are currently using in the main fish tank.

We sized the tower to contain the same amount of water that is contained in all of the media filled grow beds combined when full. This should be enough volume to mineralize all the solid fish waste that would otherwise be going into the grow beds.

We had initially planed to move the media from one or more grow beds into this tower. We may still do that, but for now we are testing the current implementation without media in the tower. When we do this, we will have combined the bio-filter into the tower. We are also thinking of adding a second tower just for the media as a separate bio-filter. The main problem with that idea is the limited space we have inside our grow room.

The project appears to be successful. The air under pressure entering the bottom of the tower and rising degases the water. The smell from the top of the tower is an indication of this process. Distributed over forty four square feet of grow bed, the smell was not noticeable, but the smell coming from the hole in the top of the tower gives an enhanced experience.

The Dissolved Oxygen in the water coming from the overflow back to the fish tanks is at 97% saturation as measured on our trusty Milwaukee DO meter. That is a measured 8.3 ppm (mg/L) out of a possible 8.5 ppm. The DO coming from the grow bed return to the fish tank is 6.5 ppm or greater. The combined DO level as measured in the fish tank is 7.5 ppm. This is quite an improvement in our fish tank DO.

The water going to the grow beds is much cleaner than it was prior to incorporating this technology. The fish tanks are becoming even clearer than before.

Prior to this addition, we were adding pH-UP weekly. Since adding the tower, the pH has stabilized at about 7.0. We attribute this to the degassing of the water. Time will tell if this trend continues.

What will be continuing are lots of interesting and informative R&D experiments and results that we’ll keep sharing with you. Hope you had an enjoyable Thanksgiving. Until we post again, Get Growing.

Oliver

Humble Seed Romaine Seedlings sitting on the Syphon

As I begin to write this post, I’m realizing I need to write a post about how I got the seedlings to germinate in the first place as that is an important part of the aquaponic gardening equation. Many soil gardeners buy their seedlings already germinated in small potting containers and simply place their germinated seeds into their garden beds. Aquaponic gardeners do not have that luxury as soil contaminates the growing area. So aquaponic gardeners need to germinate their own seeds.

The seeds you see in the photo above have been growing in Grodan Rockwool cubes for about 12 days. Grodan is one of the brand names of these popular germinating methods. Rockwool was originally used for insulation. It was first developed for gardening in Denmark and became popularized by hydroponic gardeners. Rockwool is made by melting a combination of rock and sand, which is spun to make fibers which are formed into different shapes and sizes. We sell sheets of 98 1 and 1/2 inch Grodan Rockwool plugs on our website on our “Accessories” page. The plugs come lightly stitched together like stamps and fit perfectly inside a standard seedling tray.

Grodan Rockwool Plugs

I’ll do an entire post on how this process takes place in the near future; but for now, I want to talk about our new Humble Seed Romaine Seedlings that you see sitting in their Rockwool plugs on top of the syphon that’s in our Grow Bed #4. As you can see, I placed more than one seed in each of these plugs; and every seed sprouted! That’s really great. I’ll thin out the beds after things get going. In the meantime, I’m really thrilled with our Romaine Humble Seed. I also planted seeds from some other popular seed companies like Paramount, Baker and even Martha Stewart; but our Humble Seed had a greater percentage of germination success and went into the Grow Bed strong and healthy. So far, I’m a believer in the Humble Seed motto–Seed that Feeds.

Humble Seed Romaine in a Grodan Rockwool Plug in Grow Bed #4

In the picture above, you see the Grodan Rockwool plug placed into the Hydroton in Grow Bed #4; and now I’m also realizing I need to do an entire post on Hydroton as it, too, is unique to both hydroponics and aquaponics. Hydroton is called a Grow Bed media, which means it’s used to take the place of soil in your Grow Beds. For now, I’ll leave the story of Hydroton right there; and do a post on it in the near future.

Once again you see several Romaine Humble Seed seedlings as every seed that was placed in the Grodan Rockwool plug germinated.

Grace plants seedlings in Grow Bed #1

Now, you see me planting the plugs with the germinated seedlings in them into our Grow Bed #1; and, “No”, I’m not a giant. I’m standing on the top step of a handy 2-step stool that we provide with our Food Forever™ Growing Systems. Being up at this level, makes it much easier on ones back when planting the seedlings into the Grow Bed and when harvesting your vegetables. Unlike soil gardening, which can be very challenging for seniors or people who have back issues, aquaponics gardening is done in raised beds. In fact, these beds are very raised as the configuration of the system, which is all about water flow, dictates that the beds be higher than the fish tanks. Our fish tanks are on the floor, so our Grow Beds need to be way off the floor.

I’m making a hole in the Hydroton where I’m going to place the plug with the seedling in it. I use my hands to do this; but you could also use a trowel if you wish.

Grace covers the planted seedling with Hydroton

Once the plug with the seedling is secure in it’s location in the Grow Bed, I gently protect the delicate plant with one hand as I cover the plug with the surrounding Hydroton. I want the plant to extend out of the Hydroton and be supported by it as is shown in the bottom of the above picture. Once all the plugs with their seedlings are planted into the Grow Beds, I fill a spray bottle full of nutrient rich fish tank water and spray all the exposed seedlings.

Aquaponics allows for very dense planting; and I am able to plant about 80 plugs of lettuce in each of our four 11 sq. ft. Grow Beds. Aquaponics also grows lettuce out much faster than soil gardening so we expect to have mature lettuce in about 28-30 Days.

You can watch it all happening on our “Greenhouse” page as we have a live webcam showing our new Growroom in action. In conclusion, I’d like to wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving. It’s going to be so fun to walk out to our Aquaponics garden to pick our salad for that special family day.

Growing the fish and the seedlings in this two story high rise.

This handy shelving device that you can pick up at Home Depot makes a great two story growing area for both your fry (baby tilapia) and your seedling trays. We’ve hung two florescent lights, which are providing plenty of light for the fish and the plants.

We have a variety of different lettuces in the seedling trays; and I will be planting the sprouted lettuce into grow beds in both the Greenhouse and the Growroom tomorrow.

Our adult Tilapia are so happy in the new Growroom, they are mating a lot; and we have more babies than we’ve ever had. We decided we needed to add a separate rearing tank for the little ones so we fired up this aquarium and placed water from the Food Forever™ Growing System into it.

Tilapia will mate more in warmer water. Because the Growroom environment is so well controlled, their water and the room temperature is staying in the low 80′s. They also really like those Tilapia Condos we created and are using them as nests.

The male Tilapia hangs out in the nesting area; and encourages the female to come in and lay her eggs. It’s quite a scene to observe their mating ritual, which has a lot to do with a rather aggressive face-sucking action in which the male Tilapia puts his huge mouth around the smaller face of the female to pull her into his lair. If she resists, there’s a lot of splashing that takes place.

These are Cabbage Loopers and they also love lettuce

Once your aquaponics Food Forever™ Growing System is up and humming along with fish and balanced nutrients, you become a year-round gardener. However, aquaponics gardening is somewhat different than soil gardening due to three important facts:

1. You can plant more densely
2. Everything grows faster and
3. It’s an endless garden.

It could be said that aquaponics gardening is gardening on steroids. Everything is denser, bigger, faster; and it never ends.

But one thing that remains the same (except not as intense as when you’re out in the open) is the gardener’s battle with pests. In the last two years, we’ve had to deal with aphids, white flys, the Cecropia Moth Caterpillar and now the Cabbage Looper Caterpillar that was munching on the lettuce in the Grow Bed we just culled making washing that last batch of lettuce a not so fun experience.

These guys are ravenous eaters. The ones in the photo above were in a measuring cup for about 24 hours and devoured every morsel of lettuce that was left in the cup with them. The last little bit of lettuce is being eaten by one of the caterpillars in the photo. After taking this photo, I took them out to that vacant lot and dropped them into the pile of discarded lettuce we left for the rabbits. Now, all they have to do to survive is dodge rabbit teeth.

But the most horrific looking pest of all was the Cecropia Moth Caterpillar. These guys love tomato plants and can grow to be over six inches long and as big around as a cuban cigar. They are really, really ugly with these weird blue antennae things sticking out all over their bodies.

The Cecropia Moth Caterpillar made trimming tomato plants a very conscious and alert experience as the last thing I wanted to do was run into one of them. As big as they could get, they were still very hard to see because they were the exact same color as the plant. Same goes for the Cabbage Loopers. They look just like the lettuce upon which they thrive. Caterpillars are masters at camouflage.

Now, here’s where combating pests is very different in an aquaponics garden than a soil garden. You can’t use poison bug killers because you’ll end up killing your fish. Your fish are like the canaries in the coal mines–they let you know when anything toxic gets into your system because it will kill them. And dead fish are not good food fish.

So what do we do to combat pests? Several things, none of which are harmful to our fish. We buy live lady bugs and let them loose in our Greenhouse (and now Growroom) to eat the aphids. We hand captured those horrid looking Cecropia Moth Caterpillars. There weren’t that many of them when we discovered them, so that worked; and believe me, mine were not the hands doing the capturing. We hang “Sticky White Fly Traps” to capture the white flys; and are selling these handy little gadgets on our “Accessories” page.

As for the Cabbage Loopers, we didn’t discover them until it was time to cull the Grow Bed, so they were washed off the lettuce or placed in the bin designated for the rabbits. Our Growroom is new and pest free (except for a few white flies) right now. We’ll be hanging some “Sticky White Fly Traps” soon in there. We’re hoping because it’s more enclosed, it won’t get many pests. It does have one large spider that is a good guy who is living on white flies and seems to have made the Growroom home. I’ll be taking his photo and sharing his story in the near future.

The Greenhouse is more pest available because we open the Greenhouse door a lot to invite bees in to pollinate our flowering plants, which they do. We’re discovering that gardening is such a multi-life form world; and aquaponics gardening is no exception. It actually adds a entire species–fish–to the amazing process of growing your own food.

Tear out the old to make way for the new

So far on this Blog and on our Website, we’ve been sharing what Aquaponics USA Grow Beds look like in their prime; but the real truth is this: Sometimes Grow Beds aren’t pretty.

This is one of those days. All that hairy looking stuff is roots–lots and lots of lettuce roots that have just been pulled up out of the hydroton in the Grow Bed. This is the exact same Grow Bed we featured in our latest video that we created only about three weeks ago. If you haven’t seen it yet and want to see this Grow Bed when it was beautiful go to our “About” page.

As a young gardener (not in age but in gardening experience), I’m only just now getting used to how temporary and fleeting a beautiful, thriving and productive garden is. One day, it’s there and the next, it’s gone. Gardening is a very fluid endeavor and a great teacher of the motto: “Change is the only thing we can count on.” The good news about aquaponics is this–you can turn around and plant again immediately regardless of the season. I have 400 seed plugs of lettuce sprouting right now; and I’ll show you this same bed with the young lettuce planted in it soon.

In the back of this bed, are two bowels full of still edible lettuce even though much of the lettuce that remained in the bed had bolted. The reason we can eat bolted or nearly bolted lettuce is because aquaponically grown lettuce is so sweet and delicious, it still tastes fine even after bolting. However, the pile of lettuce on the left is going to the rabbits, which live in the empty lot right next door; and they are some of the fatest, happiest rabbits in town.

A really bad hair day

This hairy mess is a close-up of what’s left after a head of lettuce has been chopped off as close to the roots as possible and the roots are still clinging to a lot of hydroton from the Grow Bed. Now, you probably know the hydroton is the Grow Bed Media that is used in place of dirt to hold your plants in place. It also functions as your bio-filter. If you don’t know what a bio-filter is, scroll down and read our earlier series called Aquaponics 101 Parts 1-5.

What you have to do when you clear out a Grow Bed in preparation for the next planting is get all those pellets of hydroton out of the roots and back into the Grow Bed. Hydroton is not something you want to waste or throw to those eagerly waiting rabbits as it is not cheap. Both the roots and the hydroton are connected to a seed starting plug, which we use to sprout our seeds. These plugs come in a multi-cube pack that fits in a standard seed starting tray. We have a page on our website where you can order Seed Starter Kits that consist of the seedling tray, the multi-cube pack and a protective, humidifying dome.

Once in the house, the edible lettuce has to be washed immediately or it will wilt and no longer be edible. However, if you miss your washing window by a couple of hours and return to wilted lettuce like I did last night, soaking your lettuce in cold water will bring it back to life.

The two bowels full of lettuce above, plus the two bowels in the top picture, ended up producing seven 10 oz. bags of washed, edible lettuce, which are now in our refrigerator. This Grow Bed produced beautiful, prime lettuce that we ate from for about two months before we harvested the crop. We’re doing some time studies to see how long our lettuce will stay fresh in the refrigerator as we believe that vegetables grown from fertilizer produced by live fish have more life force energy than vegetables grown with pesticides. We’ll let you know how our time studies turn out. In the meantime, we’ll be eating lots of lettuce.

Residents of the Tilapia Condos

This is one of our newest products to hit our website. We call them Tilapia Condos; but we’re thinking other species of fish will also appreciate them. A Tilapia Condo consists of a series of 4″ round PVC pipes cut to about 18 inches in length, sanded until the edges are smooth and then hooked together in a double-layer multiple dwelling. The Condo sits at the bottom of a fish tank and is the perfect addition to a fish growing environment.

This Tilapia Condo is in our 320 gallon tank that is 4 ft. deep. Until we came up with the Condo idea, we used individual PVC Pipe dwellings; but they would move around all over the bottom of the tank depending on what the tilapia were up to. Connecting the individual dwellings in this way made them stay in one place so they now serve as more dependable and solid dwellings thus reducing the stress on our fish.

However, our Tilapia seem to also enjoy roof-top relaxing as one of their favorite things to do is lay on top of the Tilapia Condo sideways. When we walk into the Growroom, we hear a big splash as one of the roof-toppers jumps off the roof. You can actually observe this behavior by clicking over to the Greenhouse page of our website and scrolling down to our Growroom webcam at the bottom of that page.

Happy, stress free fish are healthy fish; and healthy fish are what you want to raise to get healthy food. Click over to our “Accessories” page to order a Tilapia Condo. They come in two sizes to accommodate both small and large tilapia.