Greetings, Campers!
As we start work on our new ISBU home, we’re thinking about ways to tweak it further.
My home – being built from (2) pairs of 20′ High Cube ISBU and conventional in-fill – has a large 2 story solarium (clad in steels and salvaged Lexan sheets) designed as both “entry foyer” and “food producer”. Think “walk-thru greenhouse”.
I admit that when I designed it, I just wanted to grow enough herbs to make the home smell like a deli. I wanted to get up to the smell of fresh basil and head for the sack with the smells of sage and rosemary still thick in my nostrils.
But the more I looked at that solarium, the more I thought about the spaces that it would provide.
I started thinking about how to use the spaces beneath the planting beds for something besides pots, gardening tools and bags of soil.
As we started exploring how that solarium could be used to full advantage, we started thinking about ways to harness all that energy and goodness, to actually allow the farming of “proteins and vittles”… in a twenty foot walk from the kitchen, without having to actually go “outside”.
In hard times, it’s best to manage everything that you can, internally. It reduces your risks and makes you more self-reliant. Anything grown “within arms reach” prevents travels out of your yard to procure.
Many of you know that I always press/pressure/arm-twist families to (at the very least) install a raised bed garden into their home plans, to offset their families food costs.
Hey, where I live, tomatoes cost more than gasoline. Oy.
So… in many of my homes, we’ve included both hydroponics and fish farming.
I’ve even talked about using ISBUs as holding tanks for fish and frolic, much to the chagrin of people who just couldn’t wrap their heads around it.
Using fish to “bump” plant production isn’t new.
It’s a concept called “aquaponics”. You’re basically cultivating fish and then using that nitrogen rich water (from the fish poop) to grow vegetables in. The planter beds clean the water (thru filtration) and then it returns to the fish to start the process over again.
Can you say “Symbiotic”?
I knew you could.
It isn’t going to solve the world’s problems, but it will contribute to solving ours. And I am sure that along the way… my son will take great delight in tormenting all those poor fish, before we filet and fry them. 
We’re going to run fish tanks (we’ve started collecting them from thrift stores and Craigslist) along the bottom of our planter beds and then run a series of recirculation pumps (fueled by our photovoltaic panels) that will feed a “MacGiverish Nitrogen stack”.
No! They won’t be mutant fish raised in the dark. Lighting for the fish? L-E-D.
And then, with just a little effort per day… the fish will grow and that enriched water they create will then feed the planting beds. Pretty hands free. Pretty simple stuff, really.
And, the fish aren’t bad to look at. As a kid, I used to dump bags of mixed Central American cichlids into a big tank to watch them define their territories. After a while, some of them got big enough that we had to remove them. Now, I admit that we “freed” them by releasing them into local ponds. Had my dad been home, he’d have insisted that we eat them. Alas… as a kid… it’s hard to eat fish that you named…. 
But I digress;
The point of this is to provide protein for the clan and nutrients for the plants.
Look, on other blogs I’ve already told readers about using your own urine to grow food… This is just less messy.
If the readers here express an interest, I’ll run that article here on RR. You’ve been warned…
We’re going to use Tilapia and Bass as proteins. Yes – separate tanks. They’ll eat each other if you’re not careful. The beauty is that they are inexpensive, they grow fast, they are hardy and they taste good if prepared properly. And they get bigger than you might think. Want proof?
Meet David and his dinner. Tilapia for four, now serving!
But, can the average family do this without devoting a lot of money and space to it?
I think so. Lately, we came across this idea:
This is “Malthus”.
Malthus is an in-home aquaponics unit designed for the next generation kitchen or living room.
Now, note from the beginning that this is a “one meal a day” solution. You’d have to scale it up to support a family. However, as a concept, it’s pretty darn good. It clearly illustrates the steps you’d need to take to make this work under your own roof.
Malthus – exactly as shown – grows one single meal a day. You’re probably not gonna “get it your way” or “get fries on the side”.
You’re gonna get a portion of fish and a small salad.
The designers will tell you that:
“Malthus is an appliance for the kitchen of the future that grows food right next to where you cook it. Malthus consists of a fish tank that holds 100 gallons which can support more than approximately 4 1/2 pounds of fish like tilapia, salmon, greyfish or carp. The water is pumped through three cultivated grow beds which filter the water for the fish.
[Editors note: Ewww! Tilapia for sure. Bass? Okay. Salmon? Hmmm. Greyfish or carp? Forget it.]
Malthus is designed to optimize space and costs with indoor food production. The weight of the fish tank is comparable to the one of a full bathtub, its width is about the size of two small refrigerators. Its parts are made of elements available in most DIY stores.”
If you really look closely at the drawings and diagrams on their site, you can see just how simple this would be to achieve. It really is turnkey.
Read more about it, here:
Image Credits: Google Images and Conceptualdevices.com
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