Backyard Aquaponics

[ Backyard aquaponics seems to offer an impressive way of producing a great deal of fish and vegetables from a backyard system. Backyard aquaponics innovator Joel Malcolm describes it thus:

Aquaponics by definition is the combination of aquaculture and hydroponics. The beauty of aquaponics is that in the combining of the two they equal out the negative aspects in each of them. In other words, the sum of the two when combined is greater than the sum of the two individuals.

Nutrient rich fish water is pumped from the fish tank into gravel beds, where plants growing in the gravel extract the nutrients from the water. The water then drains back into the fish tank cleaned of excess nutrients and freshly oxygenated.

A review of Joel’s book follows.
-AF ]

Backyard Aquaponics
Christopher Nesbitt (Maya Mountain Research Farm), Permaculture Research Institute
Backyard Aquaponics is a new book by Joel Malcolm, an innovator in Perth, Australia and is well worth a look.

Aquaponics is a very simple and efficient system involving aquaculture and hydroponics. The system is dependent on plants in grow beds, generally pea gravel, being used to filter out fish manure and other material while aerating the water to maintain oxygen levels.

Joel’s book is substantial, with plenty of information and is broken down into several chapters, spread out over 113 pages of text, photos, graphs and diagrams. In it he does a good job in pulling the reader into the wonderful world of aquaponics by creating a seductive and idyllic picture of the productive system in his backyard.

Backyard Aquaponics is comprised of a book, a DVD and a CD and is substantial, with plenty of information. The information is presented in a clear way, and each chapter leads to the next chapter. Questions that arise while reading generally are answered further on in the text. (more…)
(15 Dec 2005)
The full review of Joel’s package is a very glowing one. Permaculturist Geoff Lawton commented on July 12th, 2006:

Hi Everyone,
I have just been to visit Joel and have a look at his wonderful system. What a nice guy he is and we had a coffee and chatted while I quized him about all things both Aqua and Ponic, about his system and I came away with some inside information. A large pumpkin and a bag of his organic oranges.

Urban aquaculture has great potential to be developed and is one of the least applied methods of production in an urban setting.
Cheers, Geoff

Joel sent me some interesting info about a new project last month. I had written to him asking about the possibility of using wind power to pump, and with questions about the food and electricity inputs. For a pound of fish pellets, Joel was getting ballpark figures of half a pound of fish and five pounds of vegetables. However dependence on industrial food pellets and constant supply of electricity are an obvious drawback. Joel’s response is below, republished with his permission.
-AF

Yep, energy inputs are my major concern at the moment and I’ve designed and built a system recently that I hope is going to address these problems. I’ve attached a picture of the latest system that I’ve built. It’s built from predominantly recycled materials, including a 1000litre IBC for a fish tank, buried into the ground at the rear left of the system/picture. Burying the tank has added thermal stabilising properties, and allows for the use of only one pump as all water returns by gravity.

To the left you’ll see two tiers of half barrels, these are for growing yabbies and duckweed, the duckweed is for fish feed while the yabbies are for the table. The flow through these is minimal as duckweed doesn’t like fast water flow, so even though there is a fair head for the pump there is only minimal flow to the top barrels. On the right there’s 9 half barrels filled with gravel for plant growth and biofiltration. On the ground under the yabby tanks and growbeds are worm farms, all vegetable scraps from the gravel beds will be fed to the worms, and then the worms will be fed to the fish.

The plan is to document how much food can be produced within an area of 15sqm with no inputs….. I’m collecting the water from the roof just to the right, collecting the water from only 15sqm of the roof so that it’s the same area, and storing them in secondhand 1000L IBC’s lined up along the fence, this water will be used to top up the system as required. All food for the fish and the yabbies is grown within the 15 sqm. The only area that I’m lacking in at the moment is the wind/solar power, ultimately I wanted to set it up but it’s going to be a little too expensive for me to do, solar doesn’t come cheap, and when it’s just for an experiment it’s a little hard to justify.. At the moment the system is running on one 70W pump plugged into the mains, I’m trying to see if I can possibly cut that down to a 50W.

According to my calculations I should be able to produce 15kg of yabbies, 30kg of fish and vegetables exceeding 100kg in 6 months within the 15sqm, without any inputs apart from electricity. I work on 6 month periods because thats over spring/summer, in Queensland you could repeat similar outputs over the following 6 months as well, but here in Perth winter is too cold. Of course over a period of many crop, external inputs will be required in the form of minerals and nutrients if I’m removing produce from the system, and not returning wastes, on a larger scale biodigestion can be encorporated into systems very successfully.

Direct wind pumping isn’t really feasible for intensive growing, but there certainly ways to cut energy use compared with conventional methods.

Anyway, I could waffle on and on, but I’d better leave it at that for the moment.

Regards
Joel

There’s some very interesting and readable aquaponic newsletters available here:
www.pc.gov.au/study/waterstudy/subs/sub046.pdf

On the site’s forum there’s news of Joel’s systems being used on an aid project in Aceh, Indonesia.
See also: www.aquaponics.net.au