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Post by Valerie on Jun 1, 2013 9:20:16 GMT -5
LOL! These fish are just for pretty!
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Post by Granny Smith on Jun 1, 2013 10:20:28 GMT -5
Wow, Valerie, your setup is doing fantastic! Very nice pics, too!
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Post by Valerie on Jun 1, 2013 11:00:37 GMT -5
Gayle, the cool thing is, and it feels really strange, I don't have to do much to it. Feed the fish a couple times a day, and that's fun anyway. Pick off a dead leaf here and there, and look for caterpillars and other bugs to feed the fish. Other than adding an inch or so of water every week or two, that's it! Oh this morning, there was a grey caterpillar going right up the tomato stem, plain as day against that green. I picked him off and tossed him in the fish tank. Took a minute for them to figure it out, and then Arthur ate him in one gulp.
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Post by Granny Smith on Jun 1, 2013 11:20:40 GMT -5
Gotta love gardening when there's so little work and a bit of entertainment thrown in.
How would you go about doing this on a large scale?
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Post by Valerie on Jun 1, 2013 15:36:28 GMT -5
When I do the big one some day, it'll be in a hoop house with plastic on top and sides that I can raise and lower for shade, ventilation, etc.
The fish will probably be in stock tanks and I found these awesome rubbermaid feed troughs that would make fantastic grow beds. With a big system, I'll have a sump (another smaller tank with a separate pump and no fish) so I can have 3 or 4 beds per fish tank. I'd like to have 2 tanks, with tilapia and bass. It'll be a pretty big undertaking, but I figure between that and chicken, we could be a good bit more 'food independent'. The only thing that bugs me is the dependence on electricity. You can do it on solar, but gotta have a backup. One week of rain could kill off all the fish if there wasn't enough juice stored in batteries.
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Post by Granny Smith on Jun 1, 2013 15:40:40 GMT -5
Too bad you couldn't figure out a way to use the momentum of the water to run a hydro-electric generator which, in turn, would run the water, which would run the generator, etc
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Post by Valerie on Jun 1, 2013 15:51:06 GMT -5
I don't know if you can play videos, but this is one of my favorites:
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Post by Cyngbaeld on Jun 1, 2013 16:55:47 GMT -5
Gayle, that's called a perpetual motion machine and there just ain't no way. Entropy, you know.
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Post by Valerie on Jun 8, 2013 17:29:04 GMT -5
I put in a few borage seeds today and also a couple watermelon seeds - those great big Georgia rattlesnake melons. I'm gonna let them vine down the side, under the hedges and then along in front of the hedge to get plenty of sun. Won't that be crazy! I wonder what a watermelon will do with access to as much water as it wants and as much nutrients. Should be interesting, and no squash vine borers! I'll keep y'all posted.
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Post by Valerie on Jun 8, 2013 17:31:05 GMT -5
Too bad you couldn't figure out a way to use the momentum of the water to run a hydro-electric generator which, in turn, would run the water, which would run the generator, etc There's not really that much momentum. For this system, it only takes 6 minutes to drain the growbed and then there's no more water movement for the next 11 minutes. I don't think that would be enough motion to produce enough energy to pump the water into the growbed.
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Post by Granny Smith on Jun 8, 2013 17:32:54 GMT -5
No, you're right, it wouldn't be. It would need to run all the time for it to generate enough electricity. I don't suppose you have a creek nearby where you could put a waterwheel?
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Post by Valerie on Jun 8, 2013 19:50:25 GMT -5
LOL, no, we don't have creeks with that kind of motion like you guys have in the mountains. Creeks here go up and down with the tides. Or they're like the "creek" in the woods next to us that operates on rainfall. It really doesn't flow much at all, it's just mostly a catch-all for yard drainage and a mosquito and frog breeding ground. There is the river about a mile away, but that's a bit far to run the wire.
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Post by Granny Smith on Jun 8, 2013 20:22:03 GMT -5
I don't have a creek that runs year-round, either. Mine are runoff from the ponds. The creek across the road runs all the time, but it's so slow I doubt it would run a generator the way it is.
My neighbor is modifying that creek with the idea of using it to run a generator for his house. It runs right in front of his house. I don't know how that's going, though. I don't talk to him very often.
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Post by Valerie on Jun 16, 2013 14:06:03 GMT -5
Got a super nifty test kit the other day, from The Aquaponics Source. It has 4 test tubes and lots of little bottles, and separate procedures for each kind of test. It's like a little mini-lab.
Me and Becky had a good old time testing the water the other day!
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Post by Granny Smith on Jun 16, 2013 14:51:35 GMT -5
Hahahahaha!!! You're such a geek! (not an insult!)
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