Aquaponic indoor gardening

Today I found two vids on indoor aquaponics, both inspired by Patti Moreno (aka. GardenGirlTV) - as you can see they are both using the same kind of shelving units as she does. It's a pretty easy construction so anyone can assemble it, and I do think this means we'll have a lot more indoor vegetable gardeners in the future - all over the world :)).

Simon Tay Easy DIY Indoor Aquaponic (Video 5)



Simon Tay lives in Singapore (if I'm correct) and you can follow his indoor aquaponic experiment on his blog SG Energy Crisis.

ninamichelle77 Aquaponic Video Diary Entry #1



Nina Michelle lives in the USA, you can follow her indoor aquaponic experment at her blog Green Grass Ramblings.

Decisions, decisions

I felt better today and we went on a trip to IKEA. May not be the wisest thing to do, but I have spent days staring at walls and wanted some change, and the furniture mall do have the best restaurant for our budget.

Our goal was to buy the plastic container on the picture above. We've finished our sketches on aquaponics and are due to make some tests. The test of today was to fill the box SAMLA (64 liters) with water to see if it could take it without distortion. It did, almost. Now we have to agree on what to do about it; should we build a support or use double boxes?

Seedlings and fishes

You know, sometimes I surprise myself. Last week I sowed some seeds, and now I'm panicking because the seedlings are starting to surface. That's one thing I should've forseen. And now I'm frantically looking for a preliminary seedling nursery somewhere. My babyplants are placed in a eastern window and are already too outstretched to be healthy. They need light! I would like to place them on the windowsill in my study, but that room is filled with rubbish and the area in front of the window is blocked by a pile of pallets.

The seedlings are not the only things destinied for my study once everything else is carried out of it. The study is also the room where I'll place my first aquaponic systems. Yesterday I printed a very good manual on "barrel-ponics" ie. a system made of barrels invented by Travis W Hughey. Together with hubby (chemical engineer and old tropical fish enthusiast - sometimes I'm more lucky than I deserve) I modified the system into two even simpler systems for indoor use.

If you are interested in aquaponics I rekommend starting with the barrel-ponics manual. You can download it for free and it's quite good. If you can afford it I ask you to donate to the author, though, anyone giving away things should be encouraged. If you'll find you want more I recommend Aquaponics.com with informative articles and a book store that makes me drool...

My first systems won't be that remarcable. Hubby and I decided on goldfishes for the first tries. Today we went to one of the local petstores to check out the current prices. A small goldfish cost thirtyfive kronas (about five dollar) a neon tetra five kronas (about seventyfive cents) - hm I may use tetras instead. A sixtyfive litre (seventeen gallon) aquarium would cost me close to sixhundred kronas (about seventyfive dollar). Interestingly enough a plastic box of the same size is sold at IKEA for seventynine kronas (ten dollar) and I know that members of our local tropical fish association use them for nursery tanks. I have tough decisions to make.

And speaking of tough decisions, Just a short thanks to my US readers that you voted last night. No matter who you voted for the action in itself counts. Thanks.