Geek Speak #1 My Plans For A Super Efficient Aquaponics Farm
Hello Steemers 👋 👋 👋 since this is the first edition of a segment i’m calling Geek Speak i guess ill inform you what its about. It’s pretty self explanatory but it will basically be about any Geeky topic i feel like talking about(Future Tech, Botany, Mycology, Technology, Video Games, Electronics, etc).In this edition of Geek Speak i’m Going to talk about my plans for an Aquaponics Farm that I'm planning on building when i get back to the Philippines next year.If you guys don't know what an Aquaponics farm is its basically an efficient type of farming that combines aquaculture with hydroponics. Aquaculture is basically the name given for Fish farming and Hydroponics is when you grow Plants without soil in nutrient rich water.
🐟 🌱 🐠 🍅 🥗 Basic Aquaponics System🐟 🌱 🐠 🍅 🥗
In a typical Aquaponics system you will have your fish in a large tank. The fish will make the water toxic since they are constantly 💩ing in the water. This toxic water is actually very nutritious for plants so you take the water from the fish tank and pump it into the Hydroponic Growing Bed. The Plants then suck up the nutrients so they can grow and this in turn cleans the water for the fish. The clean water is then pumped back into the fish tank. (Above is a diagram of a Basic Aquaponics system.
🍄 🐛 My System 🐛 🍄
So now you know what an aquaponics system looks like you and can see where the efficiency comes from. You won’t have to buy fertilizer for your plants and you wont have to use excessive water for your fish. The System I plan on building will be similar to this but I'm going to add one more element to make it even more efficient. I will add a Worm Bin to help decompose all of the unusable plant material from the produce I'm growing and all the extra weeds and banana leaves that i have on my property in the Philippines. The worms will eat all this dead plant material and turn it into vermicompost. I will then take the compost and grow White Button Mushrooms on it and take the worms and feed them to my fish along with some spinach that i’m growing as produce. Efficiency will be improved in this system because waste products from one thing will be used to feed the next. I won’t need to buy fertilizer for my plants, food for my fish, or compost for my mushrooms. (Above is a basic diagram of the system)
🤔 Problems 🤔
I’ve been looking through google to see if someone has already done something like this but i can’t seem to find anything. I found a guy that had the same idea about feeding the worms to the fish but he didn't say anything about what he would do with the compost and how much he got. It would be nice if i could get some specs of a similar system before i build one but i can’t seem to find any. An Aquaponics system is already a pain to plan there are so many things you have to calculate before hand like:
- Fish to Plant Ratios
- Sq. meters needed by the plant
- Fish feeding ratios
- Volume of water that can accommodate the fish
- Etc. Etc.
But now I’ also have to figure out:
- Size of the Worm Bin
- How much dead plant material is made from the produce
- How much compost is produced from the worms
- How much dead plant material is needed to produce sufficient amount of worms to feed the fish
I guess i’ll just build small scale until i can get clear numbers for the unknowns then i guess ill scale it up.
So what do you guys think of my plans? Are there any other ways i can improve the idea to make it more efficient before i actually build it?
let me know in the Comment Section and Thanks For Reading!!!!