Farming at Sea

[Pastor_JasonSubscriber]

CrosiarCM wrote:

And I see no reason that aeroponics cannot be combined with aquaculture and composting. This will provide extremely high yields with a minimum of outside inputs; all of the materials will be readily available.

On the one hand we have the thought that aero&hydro require close monitoring of the chemical/nutrient balance in the water and on the other a suggestion that aeroponics can be combined with composting and aquaculture. I’m a huge fan of aquaculture and composting but I don’t see what producing your own soil with composting will aid an aeroponic system.

Perhaps an explaination of how these systems would interact?

[i_is_j_smithSubscriber]

Pastor_Jason wrote:

aero&hydro require close monitoring of the chemical/nutrient balance in the water

Actually, from what I’ve researched aeroponics requires very little user intervention. The system self-regulates the nutrient jets and controls all that stuff, so it requires very little hands-on time. It even recycles the water and nutrients, although I’m sure you need to add some stuff to the system every now-and-then. All-in-all it seems like a very minimal amount of labor is required to run the system.

Pastor_Jason wrote:

and on the other a suggestion that aeroponics can be combined with composting and aquaculture. I’m a huge fan of aquaculture and composting but I don’t see what producing your own soil with composting will aid an aeroponic system.

Many aeroponic systems are just used to grow the plants until they can be propagated into normal soil gardens. There are aeroponic users who grow the plants to harvest using no soil at all, but most of the time there is some soil involved.

That being said, even if you are using a fully aeroponic system you will still get advantages from composting. You will still need soil at some point for your flowers and your gardens. Plus if you are going to be dumping waste into the water it’s much better to dump soil than uncomposted wastes.

[CrosiarCMSubscriber]

Pastor_Jason wrote:

On the one hand we have the thought that aero&hydro require close monitoring of the chemical/nutrient balance in the water and on the other a suggestion that aeroponics can be combined with composting and aquaculture. I’m a huge fan of aquaculture and composting but I don’t see what producing your own soil with composting will aid an aeroponic system.

Perhaps an explaination of how these systems would interact?

Sure, sorry I wasn’t more clear. When you do aquaponics, you are basically taking the waste stream from the fish and using it to feed nutrients to the plants. The plants then take up the nutrients, cleaning/filtering the water for the fish. Although you nomally think of growing plants in your compost, you can instead place the compost into drums and run water through them, also creating a nutrient rich water, much like aquaponics. Instead of growing the plants directly in the nutrient water, you suspend the plants and spray these nutrients directly on the root. The plants can then absorb the nutrients directly while maintaining aeration, which the roots need. The advantage of aeroponics is that you can grow the plants at a much higher density, conserving valuable space. One of the advantages of using compost is that it tends to naturally stabilize the PH of the system.

– You may get what you want, but will you want what you get?

[ShouriSubscriber]

I don’t remember saying aeroponics isn’t more effective than Hydro actually i advocated soilless farming, and aero is much more efficient in most crops. And yes i have tried Hyrdoponics and Aeorponics both, Roots doesnt get enough air? Yes they don’t if you are using a random Hydro unit. All you have to do is to force the plant to grow its roots to search&reach nutrious solution(just decrease the plants’ nutrition intake for a while until its roots get more developed) It will postpone theharvest this way just a little bit in most plants (about less than 1/15 more of the former time) but you will get much more healthy plants. Hyrdoponics doesn’t necessarily mean whole root will be submerged in nutrition solution. And i am not trying the create an ecosystem here, i am just trying to get better yields with less risk. And aeroponics and hydro aren’t really that far off from each other, in fact they both tend to fail in some cases and it is best to employ both methods in one system.

Sometimes some plants can’t develop as well as their clones in aeroponics since taking nutrition from air isn’t really that easy(i won’t sugarcoat aero it is effective but it has flaws just like hydro does, those aren’t obstacles hard to overcome though) When you are using a large system, errors always occur. When you move your mature plants to your aeroponics unit some plants tend to get less nutrition than the others and they tend to grow their roots longer than other plants to get more nutrition mostly plants might sort it out themselves or with your help by modifying the solution or removing the subject plants to a separate hydro unit but you can simply include both hydro and aero systems in one set, when plants grow their root they’ll simply reach the liquid nutrition waiting for them…

Note that i don’t have least bit of experience in Aquaponics. I mainly use hydro system to cultivate lettuce and aero system for some herbs (i am more like experimenting with aero yet) What i am trying to do is not to create a self sustaining farm but to get maximum output from my system at this point.

Hydroponics requires less amount of intervention if you are investing same amount of capital into systems. Hydroponic units on the market require more intervention than Aero systems simply because they are far cheaper, Hydro systems as well can be automated.

[wesley_BruceSubscriber]

I’ve put up a sea steading display in Second Life at the Space Destiny /Midriver sim in scilands and written about it on my blog. http://appliedimpossibilies.blogspot.com/2010/03/float-ponds-in-second-life.html

and http://appliedimpossibilies.blogspot.com/2010/03/green-dragon-boats.html and appliedimpossibilies.blogspot.com/2010/03/sea-steading-as-fleet-of-vessel-classes.html

Why do a sea steading display in a space related sim? Because they see the connections between sea steading and space colonisation. Also everything seems to work in that sim and it has a nice bay. I posted on my blog rather than putting it all here because I’m paying for the hard drive space and have no picture limits. Please put any specific comments on the three blog posts on those blog comments lines. I know we probably have ample space on the sea steading site but I’m paying blogger so we may as well use the data capacity there as well.

{Also notice how the google adds contradict the line of some of my blog posts. I’m a climate skeptic yet all the adds are for CO2 schemes! lol.}

Jesrad also has Sea Steading facilities in Second Life. That’s more official than mine.

See: http://wiki.seasteading.org/index.php/SecondLife

---

For everyone’s information I was involved with the original Oceania Project in a small way. I’m also in several space organisations. And I have a Degree in sustainable Development, sustainable agriculture and renewable energy, water and sewerage.

[KoilonSubscriber]

It amazes me how complicated people can make things that couldn’t be simpler! You may read a book about how to grow the maximum yield in the minimum space, and you may be proud of your carrots when you eat them, but my tomatoes grow just fine in containers filled with plain sand (that I dig out of the bottom of my creek) with no fertilizer of any kind and nothing but plain creek water and I’ve never had a problem with pests or plant diseases of any kind.

[J.L.-FrushaSubscriber]

Koilon wrote:

It amazes me how complicated people can make things that couldn’t be simpler! You may read a book about how to grow the maximum yield in the minimum space, and you may be proud of your carrots when you eat them, but my tomatoes grow just fine in containers filled with plain sand (that I dig out of the bottom of my creek) with no fertilizer of any kind and nothing but plain creek water and I’ve never had a problem with pests or plant diseases of any kind.

So, it’s pure rain-water in your creek? No fish, no micro-biota, no farm or other run-off, no mineral content, just pure H₂O… Try a batch with distilled water and see what you get… Nitrates are coming from somewhere, as are the essential elements, including Carbon, without which life as we know it is impossible.

Plants need minerals to grow. Water and sun-light aren’t enough.

Later,

J.L.F.

If you can’t swim with the big fish, stick to the reef

[KoilonSubscriber]

I’m sure there are natural nutrients in my creek water, because small (3-4 inches) trout live in the deepest parts and in late summer when the flow slows down, algae starts to accumulate. I get all of my drinking water out of the creek, too. But I’m sure there is nothing like a spoon full of fertilizer in it.

[ShouriSubscriber]

We aren’t trying to produce only fibers, we need nutrients..minerals, vitamins, aminoacids, carbonhydrates etc. For the moment we can’t produce these with water and sand alone (we can in theory but it is no where near efficient). And most books you can find about maximizing the yield aren’t commercially appliable even if you think you have a good yield you actually don’t, i can get 25 times more lettuces than a traditional farmer in same metric square land. 25 times isn’t something simple you know…

[xnsSubscriber]

Kollon, their whole point is to produce as much vegetable/fruit per cubic meter as possible, traditional methods only work on large surface area platforms like mine. So while I might agree with your methods, I’m going to have to completely disagree with your point.

1) The substrate of any water-body is usually very very rich in nutrients and detritus, these are very effective organic fertilizers.

2) Water from the creek will have all the trace elements required for plant growth that you won’t find in sea water.

If you’d like to test this, just get a handful of “creek sand” from your tomato bucket, place it in a bucket of creek water and leave it in the sun, you’ll most likely see an algae bloom within a few days.

King Shannon of the Constitutional Monarchy of Logos.

[AlanSubscriber]

Came across this link at Slashdot, thought it appropriate here:

http://shareable.net/blog/is-algae-the-shareable-answer-to-food-energy-crises

If anyone is in California, maybe they can get some experience with this at a relatively low cost.

[FarmerSubscriber]

Every environment has a “bottleneck” element. that limits the amount of life than can exist there. For example deep inland humans and large animals suffer iodine deficiency causing birth defects, disease and death. Before anyone knew what caused gout this happened often even though 200 mcg a day is enough to keep you healthy. This means 5 grams (1/6th of an ounce) is a lifetime supply and people died for lack of it.

In the antarctic ocean iron is at a premium. All we have to do is import modest amounts of whatever is missing and it could cause a “gold rush” effect of growth.

[elspruSubscriber]

Farmer wrote:

Every environment has a “bottleneck” element. that limits the amount of life than can exist there. For example deep inland humans and large animals suffer iodine deficiency causing birth defects, disease and death. Before anyone knew what caused gout this happened often even though 200 mcg a day is enough to keep you healthy. This means 5 grams (1/6th of an ounce) is a lifetime supply and people died for lack of it.

In the antarctic ocean iron is at a premium. All we have to do is import modest amounts of whatever is missing and it could cause a “gold rush” effect of growth.

To get the most and quickest benefit,

by getting food while it’s primitive (microbial),

just as whales we could have large plankton filters.

It’s more sustainable and typically safer (less-toxic) than anything higher up on the food-chain.

Also, to make sure that it’s beneficial algae that is using our mineral nutrients,

we can have a starter-pool where we generate the algae phytoplankton,

which can then overflow into the ocean or surrounding area.

This way we become somewhat like a lichen,

being a fungi or animal that brings minerals (from rocks),

that hosts plant algae, which is used as food substance.

Lichens are some of the most resilient organisms,

and have successfully survived exposure to outer-space.

calm aware desire choice love express intuit move

[elspruSubscriber]

wohl1917 wrote:

I took the same tour when I was down there. I never thought to ask the question about the disposal of the solid waste though: I figured they tilled it into the garden…

Hey just came across Nasa talking about growing algae from excrement on the ocean.

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/340121main_clean-energy_226-170.jpg

calm aware desire choice love express intuit move

[FarmerSubscriber]

elspru wrote:

To get the most and quickest benefit,

by getting food while it’s primitive (microbial),

just as whales we could have large plankton filters.

It’s more sustainable and typically safer (less-toxic) than anything higher up on the food-chain.

This way we become somewhat like a lichen,

This is worthy of further consideration. A lot of consideration.

[Author]

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