Q: Where are you from? Tell us a bit about yourself.
A: Guadalajara Mexico. I am an Industrial Engineer with love for nature, photography and travel. I work as a Director/manager of a company that owns Restaurants and Health clinics.
Q: How did you get interested in aquaponics?
A: I have owned and loved owning fish since my teens. Since then i always had interest on plants, planting and backyard agriculture. My parents house and now my own have a lot of space so i always experimented on planting several plants. Years ago i saw an Aquaponics module in Epcot Center and that started my interest. 6 months ago, i started my own.
Q: How are you currently working with aquaponics? Home setup, community greenhouse, etc.
A: I have a large home set up with 5 thousand liters of water and a current area of 50 sq meters for plants. the containers of water are on my garage and the plants on the ceiling 6 meters above.
Q: Tell us about your system. Geek out a bit and tell us all the specs.
A: Six Rain or Home Water containers each of 750 liters connected by 2″ hoses. the last one conects to a .5hp pump that rises the water 6 meters to my ceiling. in there i have several plastic containers with red stone gravel, (volcanic rock) in hte bottom rocks around 2 inches (the first 20 cm) and the top 10 cm pebbles of the same rock but of smaller size .5 inch probabbly. the water is pumped on one side and then gravity flushes it down from the end of the container. it goes all teh way back down to fish.
i have containers with rock and also 6 meter long 2″ pvc pipes with holes in the top for planting lettuce.
Q: What plants and fish have you had the best luck with? And the worst?
A: Best are carp, they are invincible!
Tilapia are ok, but recently i had cold water temperature because of winter and water came down to 7 degrees C. Half of my tilapia population died, and they are not eating yet! damn!
I will put more in in february when the weather starts to get better.
Lettuce are great!
I am planting raspberries, artichocke, rhubarb, coriander,green and red tomatoes, green beans, melon,brocolli, carrots, spinach, arugula, and so on. all of them growing quite fast despite the cold weather (cold for guadalajara mexico, which is 5 degrees C minimum at night. It can go to 20 in the day. but in march, temperature will be 30 degrees.
I am experimenting with diffenent varieties, i will see which of them give me produce.
I attach some pictures from the beggining of my system, i will send more after. this ones show the plants comming on week 3 of planting.
Q: What do you like most about aquaponics? Least?
A: the most: it gives me peace
the least: plants grow very slow (i mean, i wish i could plant, wait 2 days, and have my produce ready jajaja)
Q: What do you think the biggest misconception about aquaponics is?
A: It is not very known in mexico.
Q: What are your future aquaponics goals?
A: I want to go to tue US for a course or visit to many aquaponic sites. I just need to save some money.
Q: What do your friends say when you show them your system for the first time?
A: WOWWWWWWW!
Q: What is your next big gear purchase going to be? What about your next small one?
A: Probably a particle filter…
Q: What’s the best recipe you’ve ever had/made, based around something you grew in your system?
A: not yet, but i do really good jam/mermelaide out of raspberrys and blueberrys, i grow in my normal garden
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