Creating a Sustainable System - Aquaponics and more - (The beginning)

Since our ultimate goal is to produce most of our own food, we have been interested in sustainable systems.  An aquaponics system seemed like a good place to start, since the idea of it involves creating a sustainable ecosystem that recycles its own waste, water, and nutrients in various ways.  If you've never heard of Aquaponics before, it is a combination of hydroponics (growing plants in a water instead of soil) and aquaculture (raising fish for food).  The concept is simple.  The fish release their waste products, which become nutrients for the plants.  By absorbing nutrients from the waste water of the fish, the water is filtered and can be recycled back into the fish tanks.

My partner, Brian, has a eerie ability to construct, modify and/or repair just about anything you can think of.  He can fix cars, build houses, and even help to heal your injured shoulder massage therapy.  With the exception of computers, he can create and repair just about anything.  Aquaponics, therefore, was something he immediately and somewhat intuitively understood the workings behind.  The biologist in me loves the idea of this system since a large part of it depends on understanding the intricate relationships between organisms and their non-living environments within an ecosystem.  My mind still struggles, however, with the mechanics of the system.  This includes creating a system that can distribute water to various growing beds in a way that allows the water level to regularly rise and fall within the beds.  The water then needs to be pumped back to the fish from the various storage tanks and recycled.  The water chemistry is fairly straightforward, but needs to be monitored regularly to be sure that the nutrient levels do not rise or fall too much.  The water also needs to be heated, since we live in the mountains at over 8000 ft of elevation.  Brian has built our current system by hand, using as many recycled materials as possible.  We have added and changed the system in increments.  Three years ago, we began converting the barn on our property to a space that was usable for aquaponics.  Here are a few photos of the process:

Our original plan was to put plants upstairs and fish downstairs, so we began with adding some polycarbonate material as roofing to part of the upper level of the barn.

Our first fish were goldfish.  We later added Talapia that were donated from a friend who is growing them.

We eventually took down the south wall of the barn and replaced it with free sliding glass doors we found on craiglist to create the large windows you see here.  This allowed us to have a heated and insulated space to grow the vegatables in the downstairs part of the barn.  The blue containers were 50 gallon recycled barrels that had been used to store soy sauce.  We obtained them from a container recycling center, cut them in half, cleaned out the soy sauce, and constructed grow beds from them.  The medium inside of them are expanded clay pellets.  In the winter, when the sun hit the barn at an angle, these windows worked nicely, but when summer arrived and the sun shone from directly above the barn, these grow beds were no longer receiving much direct light at all.

Our first round of growing vegetables in the system.

These lettuce plants were sitting on top of a Styrofoam layer that floated over a bed of water.  You can see the root system, which is usually submerged in the water.  Other plants grew in the larger beds (seen above) as the water level rose and lowered periodically. 

Although we were able to grow some fish and some vegetables with this system, we soon realized that there were some flaws.  (1) We used non-insulated polycarbonate material on the upper level of the barn with the intention of turning that space into usable greenhouse space.  Since we live at a high elevation, winter starts early and lasts late.  Temperatures drop into the negatives regularly.  The top floor of the barn, therefore, became a good place to grow plants only for the spring, summer, and fall.  Because of our insulated windows downstairs, we could grow year -round, but only had limited space for growth next to the windows.  (2) Furthermore, the windows did not allow for direct sun during the summer time.  We needed access to more sunlight if we wanted to grow some plants year-round.