The first week at ISDSI students got an opportunity for a field study to a rural development project that raises fish — the Northern Thailand Foundation For Enablement.  The project is a great example of how an NGO can play a pivotal role in sustainable development — helping a large network of farmers be more self sufficient through aquaculture.

The students learned about the fish hatchery, and then go to work helping clear ponds, collect fish eggs (tilapia are mouth brooders), and harvest fish.  They also had a great lunch of VERY fresh fish!

Click through to the photos for more!

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A friend of ours, Randy Bevis, introduced us to the idea of running a barrelponics system at ISDSI.  Randy runs a development project north of Chiang Mai city where they raise fish for stocking aquaculture ponds in local communities.  We looked into the system, and found a great resource online at F.A.S.T with the barrelponics manual and more information on aquaponics in general. This January on of the ISDSI students from Kalamazoo College, Adam Smith, decided to take on the project, and as part of his J-Term independent study built a barrelponics system at ISDSI, where it is now running with fish (tilapia) and growing vegetables. It is a great small scale system, and we are going to run it and monitor the system to see how we can adapt it to urban sustainability projects — as well as provide fish and vegetables for ISDSI.

The basic idea is to link fish with hydroponic vegetable production, where the fish waste provides nutrients to the plants, and the plants in turn clean the water for the fish.  The only input needs to be fish feed, since energy is taken out of the system in the form of plants and fish.

Here are some photos of the build and an explanation of the system.

The system before loading in the gravel for the hydroponic beds.

Adam linking together the grow beds and the fish barrel. The gravel deformed the barrels, so we added a strap to keep them from deforming too much.

Water from the fish barrel is pumped up to a float tank, and then as it fills a recycled water bottle, it opens a valve (the same as in a toilet) and water flows into the system. This shows the gravel beds and the fish tank.

The first test of the water flowing into the gravel beds -- the water flows in, and then drains into the fish tank before cycling back up through the system.

The whole system -- you can see the tank that holds the water, the water bottle that fills and empties to trigger the valve opening, and the pipes into the grow beds. You can also see the vegetables starting to grow in the gravel beds.

Before the vegetables were big enough to clean the water, Adam found the ammonia levels going up, so we went to the Ping River and pulled out some water hyacynth to help filter the water. (Lydia was more than willing to get her hands dirty and wet...)

The float tank with water hyacynth and water lettuce helping filter the water. We can pull these out as the vegetables get bigger.

Adam explaining the system to students at ISDSI.

Congratulations to Adam on a job well done!

The system.

Last week at the Asia ECHO conference I was talking with a colleague who runs a fish hatchery and development project supporting villagers farming tilapia fish.  We’ve been looking for some projects to do at ISDSI, specifically related to urban sustainability since our office is, after all, located in the city of Chiang Mai.  He mentioned “barrel-ponics” as a way to do it in an urban setting, so I jumped on google at the break and looked it up.

So I found the website F.A.S.T. and the manual for building a barrel-ponics system, along with lots of great information elsewhere online. The author of the manual, Travis W. Hughey writes:

First let me explain that you do not have to have a college degree to be successful with aquaponics on the home level.  Just like you do not have to understand the chemical process that goes on during combustion in the engine of your car to successfully operate it you do not need to fully understand the complexities of the biochemistry involved in aquaponics.  You do need to know a few things though just as you do to operate your car.  If you get the chance to attend an aquaponics course or seminar I highly recommend it.  If not there is always the school of hard knocks.  Just be sure you start small.  That’s what this manual is all about.

That sounds about right for us!

The system is great — fish supply nutrients to plants, which then filter the water for the fish.  Built using simple technology, this could easily be built in Thailand in urban areas using local resources and know-how. It would be easy enough to hook the pump up to a small solar cell and battery.

So we’re hoping to start one at ISDSI, and hopefully as a student project which we could then monitor and learn from.  We’re also working on a worm bin as well as urban chickens.  We’ll keep you posted!