Growth Update

Howdy Folks,


My arugula plants are growing like crazy! I tried to take a picture of the roots growing, but my phone camera is not very good. Its a shame too. The roots are at least 5-8 cm on all of the net pots.

My heirloom tomato is still being a beast! Growing super fast. I hope that I will get some tomatoes form the plant but I am not sure if it will self pollinate or not. But I will find out :) From my reading most tomato plants will self pollinate because they have both male and female parts. Might be different from heirloom tomatoes though. I try to self pollinate the flowers by rubbing my finger on each flower and trying to act like a busy bee, spreading the pollen.

Here is what you came to see. Pics!

The roots are taking off!

The roots will grow and hang in the oxygenated rich water.

Lots of room for more net pots and more veggies!

Tomato plant loving its aquaponic home

Stay tuned for another update soon!

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The Plant

The Plant

The other day I visited The Plant in Chicago. It was great to see! There was tons of innovative ideas and a very cool guided tour. The reason I went was to see the aquaponics but it turned out to be much more than that. The Plant serves as a small business incubator. I was knew to the term, but it allows new business to come in with lower start up costs. Each business is a cog in The Plants giant wheel. Everything going on in The Plant works in conjunction with each other. Spent brewers grain gets used for mushroom substrate, CO2 from the Kombucha Tea process gets pumped into the aquaponic rooms to enrich the plants air. These are just two of the many symbiotic relationships the different business have with each other.

The Plant has plans to install an anaerobic digester. This technology will provide the building with Bio Gas. The Bio Gas will provide The Plant with all its electricity and be able to sell some back to the power company at night! It works like a mechanical stomach. The right blend of fatty, oily matter and solid, starchy matter (which The Plant is paid to remove) is combined, and constant slow rotation starts a fermentation process that creates Bio Gas. When the "stomachs" contents are done digesting there are two by-products. The liquid byproduct is sold to farmers as an organic nitrogen fertilizer. The solid byproduct is used as a compost. The property is just over two acres so most of the compost will also be sold.  

Although there is still a little ways to go with construction around the HUGE building, the aquaponics system in the basement is flourishing! The main food production bed and fish tanks can produce a 1/4 ton of veggies and 100 lbs of fish a month!

The main grow bed that produces a 1/4 ton of mixed
greens. Seed to harvest in 30-45ish days.

This is their LED grow bed. They are growing Curly Kale.
Only purple / blue LEDs are used to not waste valuable electricity
on light spectrums the plants do not use. Curly Kale is the
most nutrient leafy greens. Very efficient power to nutrition ratio.  

Producing 100 lbs of fish each month cannot be easy, but this system makes it look like people have been doing it for decades. They have the fish in raised IBC containers so the gravity pumps the water into the grow beds. 

One of many IBC containers used by The Plant. These are
easy to recycle for aquaponic needs. 

Settling tank and minimal mechanical filtration.
Behind, you can see the main grow bed. 

Aquaponic plumbing

                 

Myself, Felix Vogele, at The Plant

I was very impressed with The Plants aquaponics systems. The whole process is about putting as little in as possible and getting as much as possible out. If all goes to plan, I can foresee many replica "plants" in the future.

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Legionnaires’ disease deaths now at 8 in Portugal

"In what has been reported to be the third largest Legionnaires’ disease outbreak seen since the disease was first discovered in 1976, the outbreak in suburban Portugal has claimed the lives of more people. The death toll has climbed to eight in a Legionnaire’s disease outbreak in Portugal, while the total case count has risen to 317, according to an AFP report Nov. 16.

This is up from the 302 cases of the bacterial infection and five deaths reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) three days ago.

Portuguese health officials have said that cooling towers at a fertilizer plant were the likely source of an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease. Environment Minister Jorge Moreira da Silva said the cooling towers at Adubos de Portugal, a unit of Spanish company Fertiberia have been shut down in an attempt to get the growing outbreak under control.

On Thursday, the WHO called the outbreak in Vila Franca de Xira, a suburban area of Lisbon, the biggest Legionella disease outbreak detected in Portugal. UN health officials said the outbreak was “rapidly evolving” and considered it a major public health emergency.

According to reports, the current outbreak in Portugal is the third largest registered worldwide, after the 2001 outbreak in Spain (450 cases registered and 6 deaths) and the Netherlands outbreak in 1999 (over 300 infected and 32 dead).

Legionnaires’ disease gained national notoriety in 1976 when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) discovered it during an epidemic of pneumonia among American legion members at a convention in Philadelphia."

Taken from Outbreak News Today, original article by Robert Herriman on November 17, 2014

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New Fish!!!

I got some new fish last night! I am very happy with them. One of my fish contacts had to get rid of some of fish to make room for new ones. I was happy to come by and see if there was any that caught my eye. I ended up coming home with five little guys. Im very excited about them.

Blue Dolphin mug shot. When they are older,
they will grow a big hump on their forehead.
This hump is to attract mates and is composed of fatty tissue. 

The first pair is Blue Dolphins (Cyrtocara moorii). I have been interested in them since I began keeping cichlids back in 2004. They are very peaceful fish that grow to big sizes, very cool. One of the distinguishing features of an adult Blue Dolphin is a large hump that grows on its head. The larger the hump, the older the fish. While it is mostly males with large humps, females can have them too.

The next pair and single, Im not sure exactly what type they are yet but I think the single one is a female "Rusty Cichlid" but is def a type mbuna. This family of fish is pretty easy to identify. They look very similar.

Rusty Cichlid

Here are some more pics I took of all my fish

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Were now on Crowdrise!

Its not that we always have our hands out for money. Its just that helping people costs money. Hoping we can reach more partners through this medium.

But it is true that our hands are out to give a hand up.

https://www.crowdrise.com/nicaimpact

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