Green Phoenix Farms - Aquaponics

Date and Time:  July 26, 2011  7:30pm

Presenter:  Adam Cohen

                  Green Phoenix Farms

Adam received his B.S. in Marine Biology and his B.S. in Marine Fisheries.  He has been in business for about a year and recently received his business license 6 weeks ago. 

Adam gave us a comparison between Hydroponics and Aquaculture.  With Hydroponics, you can produce great yields, control every factor and grow plants without soil but the nutrient solutions tend to be very expensive as they can be used for only 2 or 3 weeks and then they need to be drained from the system or they become toxic to the plants.  Aquaponics is the bridge between hydroponics and aquaculture.  It is a naturally balanced system in an artificial environment.  Water circulates from the fish pond, gets detoxified by the plants and then goes back to the fish pond.  The waste from the fish is converted to fertilizer that feeds the plants.  Following is a short video on hydroponic lettuce production.

Adam’s inspiration for becoming involved in Aquaponics came from Will Allen of ‘Growing Power’ located in Milwaukee which is a community based urban farm that grows food for local groceries and restaurants.  Will has been in operation for 24 years and currently has 60 full time staff.  He also teaches people to be self sufficient through Aquaponics.  Following is a short video of his operation:

Another source of information on Aquaponics can be obtained from Travis Hughey: Barrelponics.  Travis uses 55 gallon drums for his system.  Adam patterned his 750 gallon prototype system from Travis’ design and also uses 55 gallon drums that have been cut in half.  He has 60 square feet of growbed space and raises approximately 100 pounds of Tilapia fish.  He wants to develop a version of his system for developing countries.

Adam's backyard 750 gallon system

There are three types of Aquaculture systems currently in use:

• Ebb and Flow:  water level goes up and down
• If you aerate the water you don’t need to change the water level and the plants do better.
• Continuous Flood:  tank is on bottom
• Raft Style:  similar to traditional hydroponic system with tank at end

Raft Style system

Plants grow bigger, faster and stronger in Aquaponics.  They have not found a plant that will not grow with Aquaponics.  Pineapples have been grown.  Even a papaya tree was grown that produced large papayas.  You are only limited by the seeds that you can obtain.  1 pound of fish will need 4 gallons of water and a 1 gallon fishtank will fertilize a 2 gallon growbed.

In DFW there is the DFW Aquaponics group that meets once a month.

Following is a link to their web page:

http://www.meetup.com/dfwaquaponics/