Interesting article in today's New York Times on aquaponics. This might be a fun thing to experiment with in a quest to become more food-independant when you don't have the space or growing season for a full outdoors garden.

NY Times: Aquaponics, a Gardening System Using Fish and Circulating Water

Anyone have any experience with something like this?

That's a pretty good article. As mentioned, Backyard Aquaponics, has a great forum on the subject. There is a lot of useful information there and some great posts about forum member's aquaponic systems.

Jesselp and Nicodemus, thanks for these links. The Times article is fascinating.

Joel Malcolm is the Aussie genius behind Backyard Aquaponics. I knew him when he first came up with the idea at the Oz Permaculture forum. He has experimented and discarded and designed and tweaked it until it works like a dream. His site is great and very informative, and there's a good forum on the various aspects, too. Nice guy.

The last time we had a private conversation, he said that an American couple were going to have his units for sale here.

Sue

Oops! We've probably broke his site by increased number of visits in an avalanche. The site and the forum is down as of now. Is there anything like build plans of his setup there? Or that's his business secret?

The Backyard Aquaponics Forum is loading for me.

They share pretty much all the information there. There is a "basic level of understanding" that at times leads to a shorthand of sorts. It only means you have to search other parts of the forum for information to fill out the concepts. In other words, it's not a step by step "how to" manual, but you can figure it out by reading through different posts. It's like just about any other forum in that regard.

You could definitely build just about any size system by reading the forum though.

Forum members often post their designs before they build, and the other members will help troubleshoot the system.

I really should officially join, but I haven't due to the fact that I'm not living in a place where I could build an aquaponic system yet.

Joel provides ready-made fish tanks and grow beds, but he wants to see more Backyard Aquaponics out there if you use stock tanks and regular hydroponic beds, or homemade concrete/wire units.

You can come up with an idea and post it in the forum, and those who've tried something like it and those who've thought of doing it that way will chime in and make suggestions.

Last spring, I held a small benefit plant sale for my friend's cat rescue organization. One man came and bought some plants, and we got to chatting, and he said he was doing regular hydroponics, but the nutrient cost was so high that he was thinking of dropping the whole thing. I asked him if he knew about Backyard Aquaponics (he didn't), and as soon as I explained the fish-poop angle as a main source of nutrients, I saw the light go on by the expression on his face. "That's brilliant!" he said, scrambling to find something to write on. "It makes so much sense, I don't know why I didn't think of it myself!"

If anyone here is actually considering a setup like that, be sure to investigate feeding (at least partially) the fish with homegrown Black Soldier Fly (BSF) larvae. It's easiest if you live in warmer parts of the country, but they are native even in the Seattle area. Last week, I was transferring a compost pile from the abandoned house next door to my garden, and discovered overwintering BSF in the compost.

BSF are non-pests, non-disease-carrying, don't go into houses except accidentally, adults have no mouths, and the larvae eat anything except high-fiber materials like cardboard, paper, grass, straw, etc. One hundred pounds of kitchen or restaurant waste, meat scraps, fish guts, livestock or dog poop turns into approximately 20 pounds of self-harvesting larvae that are high in protein and calcium, great fish food.

Two informative sites:

On-site Recycling of Food Residuals by Dr. Paul Olivier

Black Soldier Fly forum (U.S.)

Sue

A year or more ago I stumbled upon the "Farm Fountain ". While the main article is about the exhibit garden if you dig in you see some other examples and pictures. Browsing through the associated links and forums can result in some interesting info.