💦🌱 Aquaponics: Compact Food Production

In its simplest form, aquaponics is a fish tank, a water pump, and a grow bed with porus grow media other than soil. The media harbors beneficial bacteria that convert fish waste into nutrients for the plants and returns clean water to the fish tank.

It works, but only on a very small scale.

Larger scale operations for serious growing either for yourself or a small business requires additional systems like filters to separate/treat solid waste, a biofilter to convert chemical fish waste into plant nutrients, a sump and a number of different kinds of grow systems to suit different plants.

We are designing the latter, hoping to document and share our progress with others who want a home garden for themselves or a small scale, local commercial system.

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💦🌱 Aquaponics: old prototypes

We're not starting from scratch.

I've built several successful but small-scale aquaponics systems in the past - proof-of-concepts deep inside Bangkok's urban environment using balconies.

I learned a lot about how to manage water flow (simple aquarium pumps and PVC tubing), lighting (LED grow lights), grow medium (lava rock) and even custom-built steel mesh-reinforced concrete containers (to minimize the use of potentially harmful plastic).

I dug around for old photos of these systems from years ago so people can see what was done vs. what is being built now.

For all the old articles tracking our original aquaponics project see here.

There's a lot of info on the fundamentals of how aquaponics works and the lessons learned from these prototypes.

FYI my landlord still uses the large concrete fish container I made for this old system to grow an aquatic tree in front of the building I used to stay in all these years later!

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💦🌱Aquaponics: Old Prototypes II

There was also this project, small but still worked very well.

A tiny water pump pushed water to the top, and returned to the glass container below.

3D printing was used to hold and hide the plastic growing container (a cut 1.5L water bottle) for the plant. There was also plenty of room inside the 3D printed structure to house sensors and even an automatic fish feeder.

This worked well with leafy greens like rocket. It wasn't exactly efficient, but proved how small you can make a working aquaponics system.

All the files and additional info is available for the project here on Thingiverse for free download.

I'd suggest using this as a reference rather than try to build it exactly as it is. Something similar is often built by people over their existing fish tanks as a small prototype before moving on to larger systems.

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First look at SpaceX’s Starship HLS mockup at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab.

The semicircle represents Starship’s hull, and the smaller circle within represents an airlock that leads astronauts to the lunar surface

It’s incredible to feel the scale of Starship’s pressurized volume which will radically change how we can live on the Moon.

Thanks to smartereveryday for the exclusive footage.
Source: @tobyliiiiiiiiii