Researching the Aquaponics

After deciding what hydroponic system to use, I then found myself looking into aquaponics.  Aquaponics is an evolutionary step to hydroponics.  While hydroponics relies on plant food to feed your garden, by adding fish their excrements become the source of plant nutrients.  Which is cool to me because the organic plant foods are not very cost effective.  Whereas you can grow plants to feed the fish incorporated into the system, so it becomes very cost effective.  Not to mention the system that I am trying to create will be maintenance free so I can get away for a few weeks during the summer without having to worry about feeding fish or watering plants.  So...once again turning to YouTube I found an aquaponic system that really spoke to me.  Many of the systems people post work well I am sure but are not ascetically pleasing to me.  I mean yes I do want to have a garden, but I still entertain people in the backyard so I don't want an eyesore!

EYESORE!!!!

So I looked for something that would be interesting and still fit into the overall feel of the backyard.  And what I found was this as pictured below.  The "pond" is the white middle rectangle looking thing.  For some reason I've always liked strait lines, if you have been in my backyard you should know this lol.  But anyhow I also liked that there is a 4' walkway space between grow areas that is covered in wood chips and also the wood log border between the grass and wood chips.

YouTube Aquaponics Pond Idea for Fish and Shrimp

I was not sure if I should include his face on my blog so I whited it out.

Another angle of the pit.  It was supposed to be 4'x8'x4'(deep).  We only got to 2.5' deep before hitting hard clay so stopped.  Also was not sure if I could even dig 4' in my yard according to city regulations so it all worked out.  I think he dug deeper to include a shrimp area at the bottom of the tank.  With the idea that the shrimp will further process the fish excrement into pieces small enough to be absorbed by the plants.



Sneak peak to what it is suppose to look like inside the pond area!