Growing indoors though Aquaponics

[sammarriott]

Hi, I hope you don't mind me popping in here as I'm just wanting some thoughts on a final year design project at university.

I'm researching aquaponic growing systems (will explain further down) and require some insights from people exactly like yourselves. Parents of young'uns.

Aquaponics is really simple. You have a fish tank with goldfish, turtles, tilapia or any other fish really. Linked to this, you have a small pump as you would in any fish tank that pumps water to plants growing in a growing medium (think those tiny red stones that nearly all shopping centers in the 90s used to 'grow' fake plants in). The plants extract the nutrients left in the water via the fish erm... cough pooping cough cough and in doing so filter the water, proving clean water to the tank i.e. never clean out the tank. If that doesn't make sense, check out this project to get the basic idea in video format...

www.kickstarter.com/projects/2142509221/home-aquaponics-kit-self-cleaning-fish-tank-that-g

I'm just wondering peoples thoughts on perusing a project following this concept. Ideally I'm looking for parent feedback from people without a garden and would have to grow in the home if they wanted too. I'm not restricting feedback to just those however!

My 'manifesto' for the project is as follows (just to give you a little more insight into my train of thought, which is nor wrong nor right)

The worlds population is set to increase to 9.7million by 2050 and this will put huge strains on global resources. Things like oil, energy and rare earths will become increasingly scarce but these are things, as a planet, we can adapt to. Food and Water is going to make the biggest impact on our lives.

Food is becoming quickly something that very few of us have any control over. Tesco is the new allotment and super farms of 100,000+acres in the US are intensively farming GM crops covered in an array of pesticides and chemicals. People are beggining to revolt against this, but we have
forgotten how to grow. Aquaponics provides an easy, sustainable and, most importantly, expandable platform on which to practice the ‘art’ of growth.


Phew, thanks for reading this far! So, I'm looking for feedback on the idea. Think what restricts you from growing in the home, keeping pets, lack of green fingers, think as wide as you can tall.



Thanks for your time and I hope to be making some contacts on here that wouldn't mind been prodded a little more in the future!

Sam