That's a pretty awesome piece! I'm not too sure I would want to get into growing insects though. I know they don't bother humans, but I like using just feed because of how cheap it is already. No need to harvest, just toss the feed into the tank.
I understand, but I think their feed might be cheaper or at least better for the environment and make the fish taste better.
I think I will be adding the organic feed from this company. http://aquaponicsusa.com/Aquaponics_USA_Fish_Food.html When they get to intermediate to adult sizes; I will use clippings to give veggies to improve taste.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090706185049AAdL2hO Seems like if you dig down 10 ft +; your temp should be more manageable. If you can keep a constant of 50-60˚F; then chilling it a little lower maybe the trick. Keep in mind that when you do this, then the plants must be accustomed to the lower temperatures. And usually those type of plants don't like excessive heat. Basically, having to use swamp coolers or A/C units to keep the greenhouse cool in the summer months.
There's an entire subset of plants that would be used in this aquaponics setup (broccoli being the most "normal" one), and one for the tilapia tank in a more normal situation. Like I said, right now is about finding out the problems and trying to engineer around as much as possible.
Kale, Broccoli, cauliflower, Spinach, most lettuce, green beans and honeydew would work well in this system. Also, you can use a gravity flow system, that pumps from your sump and grow raspberries (high dollar crop). Use an organic foliar feeder to add the extra nutrients. Small footprint, and you can add high dollar crops. [video=youtube;He9JTA68VUI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He9JTA68VUI[/video]
oh, ahh , yeah, thats right..(looks around) yeah..you want to grow, ah, lets see, sixty thousand dollars worth of equipment..ok, ok, some really cool lettuce thats it... ..
lol..just teasing Brother..I do totally dig what you are doing. Not only is it functional it makes a great visual feature.
I don't think there will be much excess of foods in this system. I stagger the germination so harvests will be weekly; basically giving us perpetual veggies. The fish eventually will be perpetual when I get the other system running; using the sump as the fingerling stage, one tank for juveniles and another for adults.
Hmm. My instinct is that you never know just how little veggies you actually eat until you start growing them. You might be surprised at how much you end up with.
There is 36 grow points in the raft beds; meaning I have 6 grow points to each row, and 6 rows. I will use the first grow point to have week one, then the next for week 2 and so on for 6 weeks. Harvest is 30-45 days for lettuce; so each week I can harvest a head of lettuce. The first raft bed will have 6 varieties of veggies. The media beds will have my beans, carrots and other larger root crops.
I've been growing for quite some time. I know our family eats a lot of veggies. We usually have around 3 lbs per day each. I have a family of 5. We also have many friends that stay for dinner; so I took that into account as well. I am also planning on farming rabbits or broiler chickens to eat; which I can use some leaf vegetables to feed them.
