My good friend and neighbor, Mr. Jim as the kids know him, decided to try his hand at aquaponics. The idea is to raise fish in one pond and vegetables and vegetation in the other. The waste from the fish pond will provide nutrients for the vegetation and the vegetation will provide food for the fish.

Sounded like too good an opportunity to pass up so I was excited about the chance to lend a hand. Jim got a couple of huge containers from his friend Margaret and we set off to digging a couple of holes.

His youngest son, David, couldn't resist lending a hand though the older kids were nowhere to be found (smiley here).

Plumbing 101-a: Figure that everything will have to be modified but here's what we're starting with.

Time to test the pump!

From here we had to put something together to get the water back to the fish tank. Before doing so we decided to take the fish tank down to ground level... and wished we'd left the vegetation tank a little higher.

Mr. Jim fitted the siphon pipe with with a spigot to prime it, and the water is flowing well in both directions.

We added a "medium pond pump" to the fish tank for aeration and a "small pond pump" to the vegetation tank thinking it might be sufficient to deter mosquitoes from breeding.

Well, that's where we are right now... thinking about what we need to do to treat the water (it's from a shallow well), the habitat, vegetation platform and then there's the fish. Once everything's in place we're definitely going to need some landscaping, a place to park it and probably some rod holders. (smiley here)

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