Water Shortage and Gardening

Get used to seeing fish in your garden. Aquaponics has arrived and fish are here to stay. Here in South West Florida, Port Charlotte, we are experiencing a severe water shortage and it’s beginning to affect my attempts at gardening with the requirement of water conservation. There is a solution now available, but at a personal cost. The solution is to convert my gardening efforts to “Aquabionics”. That is a relatively new word because my spell checker doesn’t like it yet. The overall solution would require a large fish tank, sufficient enough to furnish the water to a water-table that will contain my plants. Then I will need to furnish the plumbing to circulate the water from the fish-tank or tanks to the water-tables. Then I have to have return plumbing carrying the water from the water-tables back to the fish tank(s). This of course would require a sump pump for circulating the water in the up direction. Of course gravity will furnish the energy to circulate the water in the down direction. With about 15 minutes of daily maintenance per day, an aquaponic system can provide fresh fish and vegetables year-round. Wouldn’t that be nice to have one in every home. If Obama needs a banner to move forward it will be “Aquabionics”.

The above system of course would require constant daily management. Time wise it would be much easier and require much less time than the old convention of gardening. That’s really great and the other benefits are even greater. This will furnish my family with certified fresh organic fruits and vegetables. When you think about it the statistics are staggering to the point of being unbelievable; and best of all there would be no weeding requirements. When it rains here in Florida the weeds become difficult if not impossible to manage. The trade off in work would be tremendous and very much more rewarding.

A list of fish that could be raised in your tank would be: I think it’s fantastic that Tilapia is the choice at the top of the list. I have made a herring like pickled fish from fresh Tilapia and it‘s really great. For a free recipe you can go to the following link:
http://sites.google.com/site/yourfreerecipepages/Home/pickled-fresh-fish

• Tilapia.
• Large mouth bass.
• Sunfish.
• Crappie.
• Koi.
• Fancy goldfish.
• Pacu.
• Various ornamental fish such as angelfish, guppies, tetras, swordfish, mollies.

Plants that will do well in any aquaponic system:

• Any leafy lettuce.
• Pak choi.
• Spinach.
• Arugula.
• Basil.
• Mint.
• Watercress.
• Chives.
• Most common house plants.

Plants that have higher nutritional demands and will only do well in a heavily stocked, well established aquaponic system:

• Tomatoes.
• Peppers.
• Cucumbers.
• Beans.
• Peas.
• Squash.

I’m sure as time goes on and more and more people get into this type of gardening that experimenting at the home level and the scientific level will bring about amazing results. Remember this “Aquabionics” is a very new adventure with the people of the world. Even in my old age I am really excited about it. This is what will return good health to people around the world. The water requirement is only about 10percent of the conventional methods of raising plants and fish. The fantastic thing about it is that they system is self cleaning.

There is much more to read about “Aquaponics“: Go to the following link and make your plans:
http://www.aquaponics.com/InfoAquaponicsAll.htm

Thank you for reading my blog. Brad Vigansky