Episode: 1225
Title: HPR1225: Modern Survivalism Part 2
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1225/hpr1225.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 21:58:31

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Okay.
Let's go.
Let's go.
Let's go.
Babe play.
Darn.
ABC.
OK.
Good.
There's an exit over here.
Noo, but there's an exit over here, too.
Just dance.
Yeah.
Oh, shit, no.
Bom..
Man, you're not here.
Kind of like Meh.
I'm sudi hippa.
Hello and welcome to another hacker public radio.
This is your host Tracy Holtz, otherwise known as Holster, you guys might know me as that
from other places.
We are going to continue on the modern survivalism part two.
I know it's been a while since I did part one.
I apologize, I'm not going to give you excuses, I'm not going to apologize, just say life
came in and you guys know the rest of the story.
Before we begin and people who didn't listen to the other one, you can go back to listen
to the first one about modern survivalism.
It is not tinfoil hat sitting in the woods, doomsday prepping, everything like that.
What to me modern survivalism is living better now and living better later with an emphasis
on living better now.
Do I store food?
I store food a little bit, yes I do.
But the main philosophy you got to remember is you store what you eat and you eat what
you store.
Five hundred pounds of beans and rice in your closet does you know good if you don't like
beans and rice.
If you like beans and rice, that's great.
But if you've ever tried to eat plain bean and rice, that's pretty plain.
I'm not going to really get into that.
That's some hard eating.
You just try to eat plain rice and plain beans, just pintal beans, black bean, navy bean,
pick one and just those, no seasonings, no nothing, hey, and it doesn't take much to store
a little spaghetti and spaghetti sauce on the side if you like that.
But the main topic we are going to be talking today about is something that everybody can
do, whether you're in an apartment, if you're in a house, if you've got land or anything.
But one of the main things you can do to better your life is producing your own food.
Producing, I forgot who said this, but producing your own food is just like having a money
tree, which it is.
If you can make an initial investment of a small amount and that continually pays off month
after month after month after month and just 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 folds, that's just like
having your own money tree for very little work.
Now, a lot of people you know that what I do and all the stuff I do, that you know that
I am not a lazy person, but I would much rather work a little harder up front to have everything
work for me in the long run.
So I'm not lazy, I just want to be smart.
So that's where this comes in.
Today we are going to be talking about aquaponics and some of you might know about this, some
you don't, and I might know about this, but you can set this up as simple as a little
balcony if you're an apartment or put it on a back patio.
You can put it in your backyard, you can put it in your garage, you can take your whole
backyard up or you could have, you know, a 20,000 square foot greenhouse and do this commercially.
It's totally scalable and doable on everything.
I even seen some sitting in the middle of the living room off in the corner.
So it's very, very doable on every level.
So the more I go into this, the more it'll get detailed in.
We're going to go a broad view of it, then we're going to go over some components, and
then we're going to go about those components.
So I hope you guys enjoy this a little bit.
Aquaponics really intrigues me a lot, and I want to train it on it, some of you guys
know me that this is a great thing and it can be done anywhere in the world.
And here goes, what is aquaponics?
Well aquaponics, first of all, in various forms has been going on for a long time in ancient
Aztecs, and I'll tell you what it is in a second, have been doing it.
They did it.
You know, ancient China, Thailand did variations of this here.
But what it actually is, is two different kind of farming, there's aquaculture, which
is the raising of fish, and hydroponics, which is the raising of plants without soil in
water, whether it's misting it, floating on the bed, water coming by the roots, or whatever
like that.
Those are those two.
And hydroponics has a stigmatism quite a bit with it.
It's like any time you say hydroponics or anything like that, the first thing people say
is, oh, you're going to grow pot.
No, I have no desire to grow pot.
I don't want to grow pot.
But hydroponic growing stuff has been proven over and over and over again.
It makes plants grow faster, and it makes grow pants with multiple times less water than
if you're in the dirt.
But the bad part with hydroponics was you had to add chemicals and stuff to the water.
You could really never, you could be organic, yes, there are organic foods, but it's really
hard to be organic hydroponic because you're adding natural stuff to the water and you're
constantly checking the levels of your nutrients in the water.
The chemical weighs a little easier where stuff's dripped in periodically and it almost maintains
itself to a certain extent and you test it.
But you have to change the water out over and over and over again with hydroponics.
So what does aquaponics do?
And the 20,000 foot looking downward, it is you have a fish tank.
When you got the fish tank, you feed the fish and the fish have two, you know, two ways
they do waste.
One, they secrete ammonia and they secrete ammonia through their gills in a little bit and
when they do the waste in the water.
And they also have their solids when they do the waste in the water.
So that's why if any of you guys raised fish before the water gets cloudy, it gets murky
and you got to clean the water, you got to filter the water and you have to do all that.
So the main thing is ammonia that we are just end the solids.
So what does aquaponics do?
Well, it changes the ammonia in the water to make it into a usable plant food, okay?
And then that plant food, it's cleaned up and it's taken by the plant and then it's
returned back to the fish clean.
So you got this natural cycle, you got the fish eating the food and whatever way you feed
them properly, then they have the waste water and that waste water feeds the plants.
The plants clean the water and the water goes back to the fish.
So it's a nice little cycle over and that's you're good hydroponically and it's organic,
all the way 100% organic and then it cleans that so the fish get the clean water too.
How do the plants, first of all, how do the plants get this food for its ammonia?
They don't need ammonia.
Well, it does a couple of things and there is some science involved but not hard science,
as you guys know I'm not exactly a road scholar, but it's fairly easy to understand
once you get it and if you do this yourself, small testing kits are real cheap and if you do
really get one and test it because that is your main thing.
But basically the first thing you do is there's bacteria that help you out.
The first bacteria is nitro-sumonus.
That converts the ammonia to nitrites, okay?
And then you got a nitrobacter bacteria that converts the nitrites to nitrates.
Well, then the nitrates, the plants can have the nitrates.
So you're going from ammonia to nitrite to nitrates.
Too much ammonia in the water and too much nitrates, nitrites, excuse me, in the water,
is bad for the fish.
Nitrates can really hurt the fish but that's in really huge amounts and usually you don't have
any problems or issues with that.
I used to want to test it to maintain it.
Basically for the healthier plants to make sure you're getting good conversions
in everything like that.
But that is basically about the bacteria that handle for the food to the fish.
Now the only thing sometimes you have to worry about is just naturally there will be some iron
in there and over time and you'll get iron in there but sometimes you will have be lacking iron.
There is a couple organic ways you can get iron in the water.
One, there's a shellated iron and that's just a little powder you add very little time
as a little iron or you can put a couple rocks in.
I'll tell you later that have iron in it and just very little leeches off the rocks natural
into your natural cycle for your plants.
But other than that, that is about it.
That's about all you really have to know about the water and everything like that.
It gets more complicated.
Yes, you need air in the water because plants need air.
The fish need air but that's handled simply as having for a lack of better terms the water
fall effect with water splashing on the top and some little air pumps of little air stones just
like you see in the aquariums as you grow up where if you have some now.
But now we're going to go over to some of the system components of an aquaponics system.
The first one is a fish tank.
That is the biggest piece of equipment you'll have and if you buy one,
there'll probably be the most expensive thing you'll have to buy.
Now there's no right or wrong way to build whether there's a wrong way to build an aquaponics system
but there's no really wrong equipment you can use.
With the exception is anything you get has to make sure it's food grade or potable.
So whether it's a 55 gallon drum you know those blue ones there's potable ones there's
non potable ones you want the potable ones most of them are though or if you want to get a bigger
system like I'm building the IBC tanks and if you don't know what an IBC tank is those are those
big three by four by three you know three foot wide four feet long three feet high and some are
four feet high white poly tanks their food grade and have those metal bars around them like a cage
that's what I'm building my system out of and cutting some of everything like that and as I go
if you guys know what you can follow me on YouTube or or follow me on Facebook or Google Plus
I will be making videos and pictures as I go I'm probably going to be starting my build in about
a month just time catching up to me now and I have to get the area ready where it's going in my
greenhouse it doesn't have to go on a greenhouse but I have to get that ready get some power and
everything like that to that but the fish tank is your biggest piece of equipment.
Now you can do this as simple as a little 55 gallon drum for a fish tank cut it you know so it
holds about 50 gallons of water you got yourself a good sized tank. Now the advantage of having a
larger tank is the larger volume of water you have is once your system is cycled through and
everything is running good less likely you can get spikes of anyone airy to hurt the fish or hurt
the plants. If you only have a 20 gallon system you can do it and it works just fine you just have
to keep a closer eye on it because your ammonia levels can spike real quick and your fish can
be in trouble very quick because your whole goal here is to raise fish to eat and if you don't like
fish trade them to a friend I'm not going to say sell them because that would be against the
lawn most areas of the US okay but if you trade them to a friend and there's different varieties of
fish you could grow and if you don't you want to get in I get like coy fish where it's just
decorative and they're doing the same thing so but that's the fish tank it's just get a big tank
I'll just kind of give you what I'm doing as I go just for example I'm getting a 330 gallon
IBC tank and when I cut my little top off that will be holding about 320 gallons of water.
Now some people ask well how many fish can I get in there it really depends on the type of fish
you have the size of the fish and all those concerns but as a general rule for every one and a
half to two gallons of water you can have a fish so I will have between 150 and 200 fish in that
300 gallon tanks somewhere in there and as they get older I'll start eating some so the numbers
will start dying off and what type of fish people I always ask I'm going to have this depends on
where you are at in the country and what part of the world now if I could have Jade Perch I would
have Jade Perch but where I'm at is against the law to have a Jade Perch if you're in Australia
jump on it Jade Perch has the highest levels of the omega fatty acids the good stuff any other
fish by far nothing is even close it's an easy fish to grow it's tolerant you know and it's
really good for you so I would do that but I cannot so the best one I can get here is Talapia
now most people love Talapia and Talapia are good fish as far as hardiness and everything that
right alongside the Jade Perch they just don't have the higher you know levels of the omega 3 so
I'm going to go on Talapia now that I said Talapia there's different versions of Talapia not all
Talapia is available in all parts of the country I'm in Texas there's only one variety of Talapia I
can get that variety is a Mozambique Talapia it's a good overall Talapia the reason you can't have
in some areas and the others is because Talapia can be considered a nuisance fish once they get
going they will take over everything because they breed very well they're very hardy and everything
like that now most Talapia are not cold tolerant so you cannot have this in your backyard in the
middle of North Dakota you're going to have to some kind of water heater which you can do or put
in your garage or whatever like that or a small little tiny greenhouse or something like that
now if I could I would get the Nile Talapia there's just a little more varieties they tend to grow
just a hair faster than the Mozambique for that now that they said that they're still pretty fast
growing the Nile Talapia you can first sell size if you want to sell it if you become commercial
and it's or eat size if you want to eat it is about six to seven months where you can add on three
to four weeks for the Mozambique so I'll take a little longer for me so when I get my little
my little fingerlings in six to eight months depending on the situation and everything I will be
having and harvesting a lot of fish for me well now that I said that do I really want every eight
months 150 Talapia fish well yeah I can freeze them but the way the system will work is after the
system is going you can start breeding your own fish and start raising them up and Talapis are
one of the fish that do not eat their young they will if they really have to but they don't like
trouts and everything like that you know that will eat their young so it's a good fish overall
and I'll be eating some periodically as the cycles go out and they will keep on growing and growing
I don't have to on that day get rid of them if you're in a commercial environment doing this
yes you want to because your growth to feed ratio will dramatically go down after that point
so but I will be harvesting one to four fish a week when I'm in cycle depending on and maybe
little more as I grow so that is what I will be growing type of fish now a couple other fish you
can grow in your areas and it's going to depend on the temperature you have to do research what's
good what's bad Talapis are really really forgiving that's why you're doing it you could even throw
in a couple catfish and I'll tell you with this is laden's body or some pump or the bottom of your
tank to help clean that up you could do that too but a couple other varieties you can do that
that do good but don't do as well as Jade perch and Talapia is the large mouth bass most of you've
heard about the large mouth out bluegill and of course you know catfish is another one you can get
bear a Monday is a really good one it's right up there Jade perch and Talapia but you can't get
it here in the U.S. that's more for Australian French and everything like that same thing with the
silver perch and the Murray cod those are pretty hard to get here you can some of those you can get
you're not supposed to get with special licensing's but I'm not doing any of that anywhere you're at
in the country and I believe it is Maryland or it is Virginia I forgot can't have any Talapia
whatsoever well then you got to do some other research you know trout's another one you can do
trout need to be a little colder water and they will eat their young so those you might want to
have separators in your tank for different size and everything like that so you just have to find
out what's available in an area what I can do what I want to eat you know and if you don't like
Talapia well don't grow Talapia grow something else you might not do as good you might not get as many
but you'll still have it you'll still have your fish in taking if you don't want it all like I said
get some koi they do the same thing you're just not eating it or even goldfish get a bunch gold
fish put it there doing the exact same thing as you need okay the next thing it's usually in line as
I'm going is the air ration system the air ration system is basically getting air in the water for
the fish and for the grow for the plants and stuff like that for some of the grow beds not all the
grow beds and I'll explain what they are later but the air ration system can be as simple as on small
systems the water falling in a waterfall type and it's splashing around getting water in the tank
a lot of times that's good enough you're good to go if you have a little larger and you want to
make sure get a little air pump throw some air stones in there and you're good to go but that's
basically air raiding your water now the next thing is the solids removal device and that can be
there's different kind of solids removal the two main ones you will see in the aquaponics area is
the radio flow and just a basic you know solid removal device now the solid removal device is a
simple as getting a bucket or a barrel you have the intake at the top of one side and exactly on
the other side you have the outtakes or whatever goes in the same amount will flow out that's just
water dynamics you guys should know that but in the middle of the barrel you know perpendicular
from the holes it's divided in half so if you think of it exactly cut in two so you got two halves
of the barrel running vertically where the in and the out are on different halves with the
exception of about three to five inches at the bottom it's open so what happens is the water
goes in everything water goes down to naturally to go to go to the side but the solids stay at the
bottom and the clears go ups you get rid of a lot of solids it's real easy to do real fast they
last virtually forever you're good to go now the radio flow filters generally work a little better
and they do work a little faster but it's a they're not as easy to set up slide the thing
and you're done what basically happens is you can do a large amount in a small bucket so you could
have a five ten gallon bucket doing a 300 gallon tank in a safe space that's where this comes
in handy but basically what it is is I'll just think of a five gallon round bucket and again
this has to be food grade the water comes in at the bottom of the bucket and it goes to the middle
and then elbow just with PVC or something goes straight up to about three to four inches to the
top of the bucket when you got the lid on so what's going to happen is the water is going to come
down through gravity go up the piping go up to the top well then the outflows at the top of the
bucket too but you have a downward PVC covering the top of the input of the water and if this
doesn't make sense go to YouTube put radio flow filter and you'll see a video hundreds of videos
but what that does is the water comes in it's with the solids it shoots up it hits the top
it goes back down and when the water's forced down all the solids keep flowing down but the water
wants out so that goes back up to the open in and out so that's why bad is you can generally get
a little more flow with this you not as much space if you have a huge amount you might just
want to get the just a regular solid move device because there's really nothing to it the only
thing I would suggest is if you do these is you'll see little valves at the bottom of each of these
barrels whatever you do because you will get sediment over time and build put a bucket below it
open it up clean it out close it and don't throw that water out take that water put it on your
other ground plants you know your trees whatever you have that is like liquid gold for your
plants so don't throw that out but that's basically a solid removal you really don't need a solid
removal if you do one of the types but it's an advantage and I'll explain that later but I would
you know really you know advise it because less maintenance down the light now sometimes a solid
remove device it also you know is also called a clarifier so that's that's what sometimes you hear
that also now another one we need to now we're going to talk about when you get more the commercial
and most home owners won't do the next couple things if you're in a commercial environment you
really want to because you really want the benefits and you want your plants just to go and you want
your fish to be optimized because you're after the sale of the product it's the bio filtration
and the mineralization tanks it's a fancy word it's a lot of fancy's talk but all it is is basically
is you basically have your your bucket or your drum your 55 gallon drum water goes in at the bottom
shoots upward with some air and the outputs at the top with a little filter on it so it happens
is this is after the solid remove is so it's pretty clean water and even the solid water you could
feasibly drink will still be potable you're really not going to smell anything because the water's
moving I want to make sure you know that and that's not like a fish tank wire you put your nose
and you go back to a good aquaponics system you know you could feasibly take the water of a fish tank
and drink because it'll smell taste clean but not that I'm going to do that but there you go
but basically inside this the water comes in and shoots up and it floats the water around a
lot of airs mixed in and the air is important because that's bacteria and you have some kind of
media in here that's fairly buoyant and you want to kind of water neutral you don't want it
floating you don't want it sinking there's different materials you can use again if you go to
YouTube and put bio filtration and mineralization tank you'll see a bunch of them out there basically
and those float around and all that does is it gives airy for this bacteria to live that I'll
talk about earlier and it really gets going and it makes your bacteria basically supercharged where
you always have an optimal amount of the bacteria to do its job so my home system I'm not going to
do that if I go larger to commercial system I'm definitely going to do that so that's something
you really don't need in the home but I want to make sure in case you hear that what that is
a next one is called the degassing tank this is another one you probably don't want or need
in the home one you can nothing will stop you but in commercial you really should and again this
one's even easier all is this is is another barrel or bucket with the water and all's you're
doing is the water is passing through you know inputting and output so the water's in there if you
know for a minute or two or a couple seconds or whatever you're just shooting a bunch of air
in there with big bubbles there are lots of little bubbles I should say and all that's doing is
it's encouraging the release of the bad gases you don't want into the air you know your CO2s and
all that stuff like that and put more oxygen in the air so that that's basically the components now
the next one you're definitely going to be needing it is your grow beds and I'm going to go
into a minute what different kind of grow beds you can have there's three main types of grow beds
for the home environment 95 percent you can be doing one type and I'll go over that in a minute
and the next one is your sump tank and this is in your water pumps basically basically what
happens is the water this is how it's generally run but there's different types and systems there's
no right or wrong here but most home systems you'll see is and varied off this just a little
sketch of water it's flown from there by gravity you know through your solids removal and then
it's going to your grow beds sometimes it goes directly from your fish tanks to your grow beds
that's still fine and then the panel kind of grow beds you have it does its thing and then it goes
to the sump tank and that's just a big volume of water down there and the sump tank pumps the water
back to the fish tank now the reason you want to do it that way is so there's a constant level in
your fish tank this when the sump tank where all the water goes into or up will raise and lower
the volume levels depending on how much water is in the beds that way your fish tanks at a constant
height you don't have to worry about if something happens to your pump the water pump all the way out
of your fish tanks so you know it'll happen there to your fish so that's generally the way most
people do it it just gives you a little bit of accident proof and everything like that so that's
what the sump tank is and there's different places you can put it depending on how and what you do
well then a couple other components that you will need obviously for you you'll need some kind
of plumbing just PVC is fine you don't have to do special PVC and matter of fact most of your plumbing
when you run it from place to place with a couple exceptions it's not even glued in place it's
just put in the fitting real hard there's absolutely zero pressure with this with the exception
of the water pump pumping the water to the fish you know back to the tanks and back to your fish
tank into your grow beds that obviously will have pressure and you'll have to lock those down
in some way shape or form another thing you might want or need is water heater or chiller
I will not need a water heater where I'm at in Texas especially my greenhouse but I might need a
chiller for my really hot summer months I don't know but some of your other parts of the world
just a water heater there you go some areas you won't need anything so and another thing is you
might want to think about is some kind of backup system you don't have to get real fancy your
plants can survive a while without water your fish will start getting stressed after a little
while when the ammonia start getting high and everything like that so backup power can be as
simple as you got two little voltage things get yourself and you lose power and your pump and
your air pumps not working you're freaking out it's as easy as getting a $40 power inverter for
your car plug it in run extension cord two year pumps plug your pumps in turn them on you're
good to go it can be as easy as that so the way I'm going to be doing mine is a little different
I'm going to be having two marine batteries and they're going to be linked to not together they're
going to be linked in parallel so they're going to be 12 volts but I'll have two life they won't
be 24 volts together it'll be basically a longer life of 12 volts then I'm going to have my inverter
plugged into that and everything plugged into my power inverter and then I will have a battery
trickle charger this the kind of electronic kinds that don't ruin the battery they're a little
more expensive plugged into the battery so the batteries are charged all the time so if I ever do
lose power my equipment doesn't even stop because it's running off the battery to begin with so
with the low voltage it'll take with my two batteries I will get between depending on I'm guessing
15 to 20 hours of no issues and that'll take care most of my power outages and if it's
and if it comes longer I'll just do like I told you before to do that but little on and off
they're fine matter of fact some parts of the places they don't even pump water to their
plants that night when it's real cold they just keep the water circulating to the fish so
your plants are really resilient to that so and the other thing is another thing you don't need but
you can is a greenhouse you know environmental controls and all that whole big realm you'll get
better results but they're not needed you know matter of fact I highly suggest you don't build that
right away get your system going and then if you really get into it expand later it just adds
another complexity when you start up and another cost because when you do this you get great vegetables
great you know fish and everything like that and what you can grow is almost endless you know
pretty much any kind of vegetable you want you can grow you know you're lettuce even fruits
you know you can grow in there you can plant trees in there matter of fact one of our grow beds
we are actually going to put one of our uh a lime tree that's that's going to be in our greenhouse
you can plant trees in there uh so speaking of the grow beds let's get into that specifically I
say I was going to get more detail about the different grow beds because there are three main
type of grow beds you can have the first type of grow bed is the one most people will have
and it's the media filled bed and that's just some kind of container you wanted a foot deep you
don't want much more than a foot because then it's just a waste filled with some kind of media
now it works best if the media is about three quarter inch it's not exact you go a little smaller
a little bigger and you're fine but you don't want it too big and you don't want it too small
because you do want the air flow and everything like that and you can do as simple as three quarter
inch rock now you don't want highly mineralized rock that will leach in the soil to throw off your
chemistry you don't want that uh there's different types you can get an expanded shell is a really
good one that you can get and it's neutral free and there's also something called you know the
expanded clay it's little three quarter inch little look like little clay balls that are
solved that you can get that are real light now the advantage of the clay balls that's what I'm using
is it's inert it's really light I can have a tomato plant that's growing I can pull the whole thing
out roots and all and look at it yep and planted back and the plant is perfectly healthy because it
gives that much and everything comes out downside is if this is outside and not protected you get a
high wind these plants can fall over so you do have to watch out for that explained it but it's
easy to plant stuff and when you plant stuff and you start it from seed or you buy it you want to rinse
the soil off and it's just as easy a bucket of water if you buy the seedlings you know they're a
little two inch by two inch cubes or whatever like that put it in the bucket not the whole plant
just to shake it around real gently and rub on it real gently and you'll see all the dirt just
fall off and you'll get 99 95 to 99% of all the dirt off you're fine out of the low amount then
you can plant the roots in there and you're good to go and what the media bed does is the water is
pumped into the media bed and it fills up from the bottom all the way to two inches from the top
you don't want the water to go to the top because you want the two inches of dry material at the top
so no light can hit the water and you don't get any algae growth algae is not really bad for your
system but it will take the oxygen and nutrients out of the water that you want otherwise and it
doesn't look as good so the water fills up to to the top and then you have what's called a bell
siphon and you can also get what's called a loop siphon and I have decided which way to go but the
bell siphon is what most people use and again if you type you know aquaponic bell siphon in YouTube
you'll have about 400 videos you know to watch what it is but basically what it does it fills up
and it gets to a certain height just through the siphoning effect will siphon all the water out of the
bed down to about an inch or two to the bottom and then it starts filling up again and just get this
fill you know and drain fill and drain what that does is with that nutrient water your plant roots
are getting 100% of all the food they want basically they're in all you can eat buffet line in Las Vegas
anything they want all the time they want they can take it but plant roots need oxygen so what
this does is when the water goes down as it goes down it goes down really quick because it takes
depends on how you have it sit up 10 to 20 minutes to fill up that foot and it'll take two to
about two minutes just to drain all the water out so it's a quick empty what that does is it forces
water down through the rocks that's why you don't want really fine like sand it's harder for the
air to get through the arrow come down and get to all the roots the roots can get all the air it
wants so it's getting 100% of the air it wants and 100% of the water it wants even plants that don't
like to be in water logged areas they're still fine because they're not water logged what people
think of that all it's in water well no water logged means it's not getting oxygen remember that so
you're getting the best of both worlds now some plants you can't grow aquaponics some of your
root vegetables you have a little harder times carrots do fine radishes do fine potatoes don't do
is good because they'll rock down there but you can research and just plant and test like that
the next one is the NFT this is basically you've got probably seen these out there and if you
look at hydroponic system basically I believe that stands for nutrient filled tunnel I think
but basically it almost looks like a trough going down a three four five inch trough going down
at a slight angle the water is put in at one end it runs down by gravity the other end the
roots sit in this water that's running past it all the time now the reason I don't like that where
I am at the water heats up real quick in those runs and then it gets back real hot to the fish so
if if I'm in Texas if I do this I want really short runs I want two three foot runs four max
just to keep the temperature down you're in the middle of Minnesota and Wisconsin hey you can have
really long runs and it really you know with the exception of a couple two three four weeks
a year you really have to worry about that you'll be fine so that's that's used quite a bit in
the hydroponics industry and that's what that is and the last one is the raft now a lot of people
know the raft because they've been to Disney world to Disneyland and they got their big hydroponic
system up with a guy all the lettuce is floating on the water that's basically they look like they're
on big styrofoam sheets with holes in them basically the lettuce is sitting in a little hole the
roots are floating in the water all the time lettuce can be in water all the time no issue
that's why they pump a lot of air in there so there's still oxygen in the water and that's
fine for the lettuce is and the stuff's floating and you plant them on one end of the bed and then
you harvest them on the other end so every day you're pushing them some down that you've taken out
and then on the planting end so it's a constant cycle putting them all in one end harvesting down
on the on the other end but those are basically the three type of grow beds that you will see but
most of you if you do this we'll do the media filled bed design which is great and I'm doing a
little hybrid I'm going to be doing six media filled bed and one raft bed but I will also have
little tiny NFT set up in a non-traditional way and basically it'll be a tower set up with a big
four inch PVC with holes in them it'll be it'll be a strawberry tower with openings on it
and the water will go up to the top and trickle down all the way through it and then back through
to my system so I'll be doing the NFT and lend it a little non-traditional way but those are the
basic types of beds you have but that's basically the aquaponics system in itself a couple things
you want to remember in this is one of the good ones is you cannot get E. coli with an aquaponics
E. coli comes from warm blooded animals in some way shape or form fisher for like not really
cold blood it cold blooded let's say that so you cannot get E. coli from this and secondly is you
never want to use pest control on your plants ever ever ever you'll have healthier plants you'll
probably have less bugs to begin with but you never want to because that will get in the fish
and that will stress the fish out and fish can get stressed very easily and fish can die from stress
very easily a lot of you guys might know that and everything like that but that's basically aquaponics
system as a whole like I said there's tons of different systems I've seen some design just out
of those blue 55 gallon drums one of those is the tank and another one cut in half the long
way for a couple media beds and sit on a balcony or the back patio and it did its thing so it's
a great thing to do you can get a lot of food production out of this for a little space and once
it's set up it almost runs itself you just going out a couple times a day feeding the fish and you
can even supplement that by growing some of your own food take a little container put some of
the fish water in there and start growing duckweed now duckweed some of you guys haven't seen
the ponds will double every 30 to 48 hours so and it's very it's like 35 40% protein so it's
very high protein for your fish and tilapia will eat it so you might want to do that just for free
fish food another thing you can do is it's it's called a black fly larva trap now you don't
want the household flies but once black flies get in there and they're they'll take over colony
house flies will not go into it because black flies really don't carry anything bad to you
but you're really not they're just laying their eggs in there then the larva you're growing you can
sit black fly larva traps you know on YouTube you'll get some videos there's no smell to it but
basically you're catching all the larvae before they drop and go in the ground and become flies
so you're actually controlling some of the population if anything take them you can also feed your
fish some of the larvae because those are like 40 45% protein and 30% fat so you could even for
lack of returns grow some of your own foods you don't you not even bind as much food you know
I plan on supplementing at least 50% of my food with something homegrown so I'm only purchasing
half the amount of food that I would and that's your only really input you know feed them a couple
times a day not too much you you can read in depth how to do that I'm not going to go into that
but just just feed them a couple times a day three times a day if you really want to you can have
a timer if you want to check your levels for you different nitrite nitrate and ammonia and
everything in the water to make sure it's all healthy that's all you're really doing and watching
it and collecting the food so and harvest in the fish so I really think aquaponics is a great
thing and what does this have to do with modern survivalism it's making yourself live better now
and if something bad happens later yes you're already there and you're prepared but I'm looking
more at it is I can live a lot better now than I could have without it so aquaponics is a great
thing can be a great hobby you know if you're into gardening and already look into aquaponics you're
already there if you like fish hey this is another great thing you might as well get some food
alongside the fish if you're already into fish so if you like eating fish a lot better yet too so
look at aquaponics it's a great thing you can do it can be a great hobby you know and it can even
be a commercial environment because if you look at lettuces you will sell lettuces at a premium
if you get into this commercially now obviously if the business license yada yada yada but if you sell
the high grade lettuce the lowest you'll get anywhere in the country is two dollars ahead and that
isn't iceberg lettuce so don't grow iceberg lettuce cardboard has more nutrition than iceberg
lettuce but your other lettuce you'll get about two dollars ahead for it well with two dollars
ahead you know lettuce grows in about 30 days so you're getting a fast product you know and once
you get your system down you know you can feasibly work two to five hours a day you know five six
days a week and you know and sell a thousand fifteen hundred a week so and that's not a bad
income you know for that not say a little amount of work but that work now that's after the
system is set up and you know what you're doing you got to go and right away you're going to be
putting in a lot of time and everything so it can be a commercial environment too so I really
recommend everybody looking to aquaponics it's fun and I'm gonna have it and again you can follow
me on Google plus or Facebook and I will be posting some videos and pictures as I build mine I'll
be starting to build mine probably in about a month I'm guessing maybe a little sooner depending
on time and you'll be able to see anything there for interest you if you have any questions or
anything like that about the aquaponics and you don't want to look online or you get the lazy web
like I do some time or if you have a question you don't want to ask somebody because you feel stupid
just shoot me an email you know I really don't care and I'm not going to be put my email on the
website you have to listen to it right here but it is Tracy TRACY at htredneck.com or Tracy Holtz
tier ACY HOLZ on Google plus or Facebook and you can find me there and I believe there's another
Tracy Holtz out there and it shouldn't be too hard that's a female and I think they're in Europe
and there might be one in the US I don't know but I'm the one down in Texas so any questions hit
me up or anything like that and I appreciate everybody listening to this and everybody have the great day
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