The Possibilities

    

Thane's aquaponic setup, with subterranean fish tank.

     A productive day, I met with one Thane McWhorter of endlessfoodsystems.com to talk about aquaponics, and really, food growing in general. Shane invited me to his house to see his home aquaponic system setup and walked me through the process of setting up a much smaller system for a project at Phoenix College. I should interject that an aquaponic system is a setup that uses the nitrogen cycle to maintain an equilibrium between fish and plants. The system that I’m trying to set-up, which is an example of a very basic system, contains two tanks, one for fish and one for plants. Water is cycled between the two systems carrying from fish to plants, nitrates (food), which the plants uptake and which in the process re-oxygenates and purifies the water which is cycled back to the fish. Problems in the system generally occur as a result of too much fish waste, not enough fish waste, or an imbalance of the pH levels in the water. I’ve interjected too much now, and so the tale of Thane McWhorter and his Garden of Eden will have to wait until next week.

Photo credit to: http://www.endlessfoodsystems.com/customer-gallery.html