It has only been a couple of weeks since I inserted the bulb end of a used grocery store purchased green onion, and look how it has grown!  Water + light = great growth.  Our cilantro has sprouted and we are starting to experimentally transplant the young cilantro into the aquaponic grow bed to see how well they do.

Here we are seeing what happens to “waste” green onion ends when you stick them in dirt and in our newly established aquapoinic grow bed.  These green onions were placed approximately one and a half weeks ago.  The green onion in the top photo was placed in good soil and kept watered, but did NOT have the blue LED grow light directed at it.  To contrast, the several green onions in the lower picture was placed about three days AFTER the one in the soil, but had the advantage of 16 hours of daily light from the blue spectrum LED grow spotlight and automatic watering via the aquaponic “fill and flush” grow bed system.

Can you spot the difference?  Of course you can.  I’m very encouraged by what we are seeing happening in Humbleville, USA.

Here is the completed, custom mini desktop aquaponic system (picture left).  The building, trouble shooting and tweaking of the system admittedly took much, much longer than I was anticipating.  You can see the original sketch of the system I made taped up to the blinds in the upper right corner of the picture.  Looked on paper like this would go very easily, but it proved a bit more challenging.  Not so much so that it scared me off of taking on another aquaponic project in the near future.

Before I start to share how I build this system, and the future results of the system, I thought I’d take some time to document the actual cost of the system now that it seems to be complete (I still want to add a few diffusing stones to the air pump output to help the dissolved oxygen content of the water).  Yes, it was slightly more than I was expecting, but I did pick some of the items for convenience over cost because this was our very first system.  In future builds, I may take additional cost saving measures.

That being said, here were the expenses …

I was going to reseal an old 30 gallon fish tank I had for free, but the fish tank safe silicone was $15 and the tank was marked down to $30 from $50 on sale, so instead of fixing up the cheaper option I paid a bit more.  Even in retrospect I like this decision.  Perhaps in the future, if I reseal an old tank for a different project, I might change my mind.  Regardless, this is a distinct possible cost-saving area.

There are leftover pieces I can use in future projects: perhaps as much as 5′ of left over 1/2″ PVC, the PVC cement, and a few elbows and T-joints.  The Master Water Testing Kit obviously doesn’t need to be purchased for each aquaponic set-up, and if anyone is already into keeping fish, they might have this available to them for no additional cost.  We did have half of the 50 liter bag of Hydroton left over, but in the cost table above that item was prorated to reflect this (came to $34.99 after tax for a single 50 liter bag from the local hydroponics and gardening center).

As the LED grow light (blue spectrum for vegetation growth) fit into a standard socket, I have just been using an extra floor lamp.  If this was not available, it would have resulted in a higher cost.