Okay, as requested by Britta, here’s the introduction to a piece of equipment that may provide a cheap solution to a problem that those of us who chose to use a setup featuring a comparatively powerful aquarium pump have:

How to reduce the interval to a minimum when it’s not about a steady drip, but quick flushes.

The Lucky Reptile Easy Timer doesn’t need specified switch-on times to be set – it’s enough to program an interval and the duration of the power-on time.  The shortest interval is 15mins, the shortest power-on times are a mere 15/30s.

As I haven’t got an aquaponics setup, that should be enough time for the pump to push the entire content of my reservoir through the system once.

Lucky Reptile is, as you will have guessed, a German company, but the timer is apparently also readily available in the UK. I was unable to find comparable entry-level products, quite surprising, given the number of foggers operated by lizard and orchid lovers around the world.

Mabye someone else knows of one, and can add it here!

I loved hearing the report about you on NPR today! It sounds so beautiful!

We set up a hydroponic system in our garage (which is beneath our house) this winter. We wanted to grow lettuce organically and used fish and seaweed emulsion as the nutrition in the water. However, the smell was bad enough to rise into our house and give us all sore throats. We turned off the system and gave up. What do you feed your plants? Is it organic? Does it smell? The emulsion that we used is the same stuff we use to water our potted plants in the house and also all of our starts in the spring that are also in the garage. However, in the soil, it is odorless. It was the constantly cycling water that caused so much smell. I would love to hear if there is any way around this so that we can try again next winter.

With any medium for your Windowfarm, rather it be hydroponics or aquaponics, you start with the first element: WATER. Many new gardeners tend to overlook this basic step, and just pour it in. If you are using water from your tap, one thing to put into consideration before adding any additional nutrients is to simply check your parts per million (ppm) and your waters acids and bases (pH).

The only “pure” water in nature is rain water. The sources of drinking water (both tap water and bottled water) include rivers, lakes, streams, ponds, reservoirs, springs, and wells.  As water travels over the surface of the land or through the ground, it dissolves naturally-occurring minerals called total dissolved solids (tds) and, in some cases, radioactive material, and can pick up substances resulting from the presence of animals or from human activity. (*1). Water contains a variety of  trace minerals such as:  fluoride,  boron (Bo), chlorine (Cl), manganese (Mn), iron (Fe), zinc (Zn),  copper (Cu), molybdenum (Mo) and selenium (Se).

Now you may ask, “how small is a part per million?” The simplest way to put it in perspective is picture a filled bathtub. One drop of water is 2 ppm of a bathtub full of water (*2).

One great tool to have for your window farm is a Hanna Digital meter. I chose the HI-98129 (below *3),  so that I can have the most accurate reading of my ppm and pH levels of my water before I add the water to my window farm.  Do a reading and collaboration, let your water sit out for 24 hours (natural dechlorination) before adding nutrients to you system and you will lessen your chance of giving your plants too much nutrients which will kill them.

If you pay attention to your water, you will have happier and healthier plants!

By: Holly Johnson

*Sources:
1= http://www.ci.oceanside.ca.us/pdf/2008_WaterCCR.pdf

2= http://www.swep.com.au/pdf/drinking water.pdf

3= http://hannainst.com/usa/prods2.cfm?id=002003&ProdCode=HI%2098129

Derek Stobbard wrote me an email with this idea for nutrients:

“Here’s an idea for natural nutrients: Keep fresh water fish – goldfish, for instance. Once a week empty one fifth, to one third of the water from your fish tank and replace it with new water (preferably water that has sat in a bucket for a day – to get rid of the chlorine). Empty the water you took out of the fish tank into your watering reservoir. This water will be rich in nitrates from your fish’s “waste” which plants love, and if you feed your fish sustainable and organic food, so much the better. As long as you are doing this regularly, your fish water should not smell. Beware of algae, keep your fish tank out of direct sunlight, as algae will consume the nutrients and the oxygen from the water.

If you grow anything other than green leafy plants you may need to add very small amounts of calcium, iron and potassium from time to time (once a month). However, you may get away without it since you use clay pellets as a solid medium in your pots, and this has trace amounts of these necessary elements. Also, depending on the food you give your fish, some of these may already be present in the uneaten food, and will make their way into the water. ”

I love the idea and generally love the idea of aquaponics (fish + plant system). I continue to remain skeptical about incorporating fish into the windowfarm because forcing symbiosis between two different ecosystems is pretty complicated stuff and the balances can get out of wack really quickly meaning you could end up with a bunch of dead plants and fish really fast.

I like that he proposes simply using the fish water as a nutrient source and moving that water to the windowfarm after a simple filtration process. Anyone want to try it out? We would need a control group as well. Build two airlift systems- one using fish waste and the other using the recommended (Sugar Peak Organic Hydroponic Vegetative Nutrients) commercial nutrients? That would be rad, guys.

Remember everyone, creating nutrients is a pretty sophisticated biochemistry application so you gotta be ready to be super experimental. You probably will lose a lot of plants along the way. If you just want beautiful veggies you can eat asap, start by experimenting with existing hydroponic nutrients and only make slight modifications to start with.

Aquaponics is the method of growing plants hydroponically in combination with raising fish to supply nutrients to the crop.  There are two main components to this system, the grow bed and the fish tank. The grow bed uses various hydroponic systems such as water culture, ebb and flow (flood and drain), drip systems, or N.F.T. (Nutrient Film Technique).  The fish tank may be set up using edible fish like Tilapia or simply gold fish.  The waste created by the fish is pumped through the

hydroponic set up supplying the plants with their needed nutrients.  The plant is provided with water, oxygen, and mineral nutrients such as nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, and sulfur.
There are many reasons for growing plants using an aquaponics system versus a hydroponic set up or other conventional growing methods.  The main reason is to create sustainable food production.  Food can be grown locally, organically, and water is able to be re-used through bio-filtration and the use of a closed system.   A closed system is one in which the water and nutrient solution is reused instead being dumped after each use. Fertilizers are both expensive, energy intensive, and have the potential to do extensive environmental damage.  Growing organic crops hydroponically is not commonly done due to the high costs.
Fascinated with the idea of fish and plants growing harmoniously together I decided to set up an indoor aquaponics system in my living room.  The first step was preparing my 15gallon fish tank with an air stone and a goldfish, Professor Gillford.  He was to supervise and participate in the scientific process of growing spinach on top of his fish tank. The ammonia waste produced by my fish would be converted by bacteria into nitrite and then into nitrate.  The plant roots would then uptake the nutrients enabling the plant to grow.  I decided to create a deep-water culture for growing my crop.  It was the most logical setup.  I cut two squares out of one inch Styrofoam, cut one whole in the center of each square large enough to fit a hydroponic growing basket, then floated the little plant lifeboats on top of the water.  I purchased oasis cubes at the hydroponics store along with compressed clay balls.  In each of the growing baskets I placed a nutrient filled cube with a spinach seed and surrounded them with clay balls for root support.  Up popped the cotyledons of the spinach plant and away it grew.  As I went through the process of creating my small-scale aquaponics system I saw room for improvement.  I started to try to replace the growing products with recycled items.  For the grow baskets I saved yogurt cups and strawberry baskets.  I found that the yogurt cup was almost the exact size as the grow basket. I used a razor blade to vertically cut slats into the plastic to allow roots to grow out of.  The styrofoam had to go.  Even though I dumpster dived in the hydroponics trash for the foam I used, the idea upset me greatly. Little broken off bits were floating all around the fish tank.  I couldn’t help thinking of the already polluted ocean.  I decided to use a hot glue gun and secure wine bottle corks wrapped with silver wire onto the strawberry baskets.   Why should I use conventional ways on a totally unconventional system?  Wasn’t the point of aquaponics to create a more sustainable system?  I think so.  Using a water pump, plastic tubing and, recycled plastic bottles I began to set up a window garden.  Mr. Gillford would also supply the nutrients for the plants growing in my window.  Linking the plastic bottles together with fire and poking, on one side of each bottle I cut out the center. I then placed the grow basket inside.  The pump pushed water up through the plastic tubes and into the top of the plastic bottles.  The water then used gravitational pull to drip down through each pot and filtering back through into the fish tank.  So far was so good until I realized goldfish eat plants.  I put the goldfish in my water bowl outside and replaced him with five Mollies.  So the saying goes, “One inch of fish per gallon of water.”  My Mollies were all over an inch and are supposed to grow to two inches.  I added a strawberry plant and a sugar pea to the tank.  The pea plant is happily climbing up some copper wire and just produced its first pea.

The other thing I’m considering is an aquaponics set up – using a fish tank as the reservoir.  I’ve grown philodendrens out of my fishtanks in previous years, and it made a huge difference in terms of the clarity and quality of the water, the health of the fish, and of course the health of the plants.  I’ve read extensively about aquaponics; but that technology is almost entirely in the realm of commercial, large scale productions, and there just isn’t much info available for at-home size applications, and even less for in-apartment (micro-sized!) applications.

The idea, of course, is that you’re growing fish protein to go with the vegetable products; you feed the fish, the fish feed the plants, the plants clean the water for the fish.  The most generic of setups include a pump/lifter that takes soiled water (including solids) from the fish tank to a ‘settling tank’ where the large particle solids are settled out into a bacteria biofilter (usually a big tub of gravel or plastic particles; you need lots of irregular surface area for the bacteria to grow on); the bacteria turns the fish urea and waste solids into nitrogen-laden plant-friendly water; you run this through the plant’s hydroponic setup, and then back into the fish tank.  The plants suck up all the nitrogen and minerals and turn it into yummy vegetables, and give the fish back nice clean water.

There’s several hang-ups when contemplating doing this in an apartment.  A) What fish to grow?  It’s easy to get ornamental fish, but you’re dealing there with a whole industry of ‘not for human consumption’ where the fish are raised in very unhealthy conditions.  Food-quality fish are generally too large to put into an apartment sized aquarium – in California, that’s usually limited to no more than 24 gallons.  One food fish can grow to 20 inches; so what, you’re going to grow one Tilapia?  Just not very viable.  B) Balance. If you’re going with fish you’re NOT going to eat, you’re still dealing with issues of how is that going to affect the plants? Are the fish going to put out enough biomass to actually keep the plants happy? Do the fish have anything you shouldn’t expose food plants to?  How do you figure that out?  In my experience with my very casual Philodendrons and guppies experiments a few years back, having plants growing out of the tank vastly increases the how large a population you can keep in the tank without running into toxicity problems with the water, because the more nitrogen in the water, the more the plants grow, the cleaner they make the water… it’s all a very nice self-regulating system – when kept simple enough.  C) Construction. But that’s something we’re all dealing with for any of the windowfarms.

I’m just sort of blathering on here.  I should actually do some more research – I haven’t looked at in-home aquaponics in a couple of years, maybe there’s been some developments.  If anyone has any suggestions or comments about small fresh-water food fish, I’d be interested in hearing about it.