and today we have a special episode for you guys all about aquaponics man I’m excited

for this episode actually to share with you guys. This place here is actually called Aquaponics

Place. This is a store that specializes in aquaponics, all the different parts you’ll

need for aquaponics, the plants, the fish, the different, you know, tubs, bins, totes.

Everything you need to do an aquaponics system in your home so that you can start growing

your own food today. You know, especially here in the islands it’s very important

to, you know, have a backup plan in case the ship doesn’t come in. To be able to grow

your own food and as much as I like growing food in the soil and dirt, you know, or the

red dirt here, aquaponics systems are great because now instead of just having vegetables

you can also grow your own fish. Whether you want to keep fish as pets or whether you want

to have them as a food source they can grow a lot of fish and a lot of vegetables to eat,

a very well balanced diet. So anyways, what we’re going to do today is we’re going

to go into the aquaponics place and share with you guys exactly what aquaponics is if

you don’t know about it and share with you some of the components of the system and share

with you guys some of the fish that they offer here. Share with you guys some of the pre-made

and pre-built systems you can actually buy and bring home, anywhere here on Oahu.

So we’re here inside the aquaponics place and if you guys are an aquaponics geek, this

is your hang out man. They got all these different valve things and siphon things and screens

and they got all kinds of fittings and they got basically everything you need to do aquaponics

at home. I mean even on the mainland, a store like this is just unheard of. I’ve never

seen a store dedicated to aquaponics. I think there should be a store like this in every

city across the nation so that people can actually start growing their own food and

it makes it easy for people to get all the supplies and parts, fittings, all this stuff

you know because normally you have to go around to five stores, maybe a plumbing store, a

hardware store, a swimming pool store and a pond store to get all the different things

to get a system together. I like that this is literally a one stop shop to get all your

aquaponics needs met. And I’m glad they’re here on Oahu so that everybody on this island

can be growing some food today.

What we’re going to be doing next is actually share with you guys how the aquapoincs system

works specifically, so that you’ll be able to know how it works, and then more importantly

be able to set one up and grow food for you and your family.

So now we’re going to share with you guys what an aquaponics system is and it’s pretty

much right here as you guys can see we got a big tank on the bottom and this is simply

a fish tank. It’s holding fish, there’s lots of fish growing in there. The tilapia

that you can eat or just keep as pets and then what happens is the fish are living in

the fish tank and they are getting fed with the fish food which is the only input in this

system. The fish eat the fish food and then guess what, they create waste much like us

right. The fish make the pee and poop and then that basically gets in the water and

then what they do is they take the water and they pump it up into this top bed. They pump

the water up and then the water filters through this rock here, the cinder, and it basically

filters down and goes back in and comes back out and strains back into the tank there.

You can see where it’s all spraying out. What the plants do is the plants actually

filter the fish pee and poop and put it back into the water. So that’s the simplified

version we’re going to talk about in a little while the more complex version and how this

system and why this system really works. It’s actually a, there’s one big lynch pin that

many people may not be aware about in an aquaponics system that we’ll cover in just a little

bit. So next we’re going to show you guys some of the different edibles that you can

grow in an aquaponics system to feed you and your family.

Alright so in this system they got a couple cool things. First soybeans, yes you can grow

soybeans in an aquaponics system. They got some little Kales right there in addition

some mizuna, one of my favorite leafy greens, especially to grow in the winter time. Also

the lettuces, of course the lettuces will do well in an aquaponics system but they can’t

be in full sun. They like it a little bit shady. Let’s see here, in addition they

got some of my favorite, this is the shiso or also known as perilla and this is a purple

shiso. I grow this in my garden every year and evidently it will do well under an aquaponics,

in the cinder right here, check it out, this basically acts like a bio filter here and

this cinder actually unlike other metas that can be used for the aquaponics has a lot of

surface area because they’re literally like little sponges. In addition it looks like

they got a little tomato over there and a whole bunch of chives growing in this bed.

So, this aqauponics system here they got a whole bunch of strawberries that are currently

in the greenery or leafing stage. They’re seasonal so they’re not producing berries

at this time. In addition they have a nice large egg plant that’s been there a while

and also they’re growing lilikoi or passion fruits that’s growing out of the aquaponics

system over and over and over and up the chain link fence. I think it will be great one day

when they have all this lilikoi or passion fruit with hanging fruits to eat and also

show the massiveness of the plant after it’s been growing a while in the aquaponics system.

Other plants that can be grown in aquaponics are something like this, the basil, looks

like it’s doing quite well. They also have some parsley here and besides the parsley

they got the red Russian kale, one of my favorite, the kales right here. In addition they got

the green malabar spinach. I like the purple Malabar spinach but they got the green Malabar

spinach so it’s planted maybe about a month ago. It’s doing really excellent, this is

definitely one of my picks for what I would grow in the aquaponics system because the

Malabar spinach is what’s called a perennial, edible vegetable. You know some vegetables

and some plants actually go through their life cycle like the lettuce or like the kales

but with this guy, this will continue to grow and keep putting on food for you so you can

eat day after day, year after year without having to continually replant like you do

with the lettuce. Over next door here we got things like more basil, and look at this,

this basil’s been growing here a while and this basil straight up has like woody stems

on it. It’s quite old, doing quite well, although it looks like it does have some still

(06:44?) on there that they may want to do something with but doing quite well and it’s

nice and tall there. In addition they’ve got the Calo or the Taro here which is also

grown in the aquaponics system in addition they got a few beets over there and some rosemary.

I know one of my favorite things to grow in Hawaii for sure is this guy right here, this

is the okra, look at those little babies man, fresh okra, fresh okra is absolutely delicious

and I love eating them, especially when they’re young babies.

So over to this bed a few more things they are growing, things like celery right here.

Definitely looking really nice and vibrant here. Also they got this plant, look at this

guy, this guy’s a nice woody stock, really thick, it’s going to seed and these seeds

are actually high in Omega 3 fatty acids as are the leafy greens that you can eat. This

is also the shiso or the perilla. This the green variety, definitely would encourage

you guys to grow the shiso green and the purple as well as basil as like an herb bed but also

don’t forget to grow your leafy greens. So here’s some collard greens here, I would

probably choose the Georgia southern collards here in Hawaii if I was growing them and let’s

see here, here’s a nice large parsley plant, looks super delicious, looks like it’s growing

quite well.

So you guys just saw some of the different leafy greens and edibles that you can grow

in an aquaponics system and I always want to encourage you guys to try and grow different

things and experiment because that’s what this is all about. See what you can get away

with, of course some plants are going to do better than others and of course that depends

on how big your system is, how well it’s draining or not draining which we’ll talk

about in a little bit. Also how much sun you’re getting or how much sun you’re not getting.

Very important factors are considered when selecting different vegetables and herbs to

grow in your system. Now besides just the leafy greens and you guys know that I’m

all about my leafy greens, my show is called growing your greens and I want to encourage

you guys to eat two pounds of leafy greens a day. You know they are one of the healthiest

foods on the planet. The most nutrition with the least amount of calories. As you guys

know, standard American food, fast food, junk food, is very high in calories but low in

nutrition the greens are very high in nutrition. Another thing that’s actually pretty good

in nutrition for the calories specifically and for the protein are the fish here. So

whether you want to grow your fish and eat them or you want to have them as pets, you

can definitely do that in the aquaponics system. In just about 10 months, on average, and it

depends on the size of your tank and how much you’re feeding them and what not. Your fish,

the tilapia will grow into full size and you can catch them and eat them. I think they’re

fun we’re going to go ahead and go fishing, see if we can catch a fish here. Think you

got to be pretty quick to get one of these suckers. Not that quick. Alright, I’ll try

number 2 let’s see if we can do it. I got a strategy this time. I’m going to corner

them against the wall. Alright! Check it out, I caught a fish! But I’m going to be nice

and let him go. I think if I had the aquaponics here. I would mostly grow the fish for my

pets instead of eating them. I got enough greens to get enough protein a lot of other

nutrients in my garden besides the fish personally.

Alright, so now that you guys saw what you could potentially grow, the plants and the

fish. We’re going to kind of dive more in and explain how exactly an aquaponics system

works and the different methods of growing. We have two different kinds of set ups here.

They have like, basically a system that has just like a flood and drain, kind of floods

it and then it drains it maybe some of you have the system where they’re just constantly

feeding it water and the system that you choose to have is going to have is going to be dependent

on the plants you’re growing so for example some crops can be grown in a system where

the roots are constantly in water such as the lettuce or such as water crest. Whereas

most plants are not going to like that level of water and have the roots wet all the time.

They need to get proper aeration. So there needs to be a flood and drain system where

the roots aren’t constantly staying wet. So now we’re going to go ahead and show

you guys both those different systems and how they do it here at the Aquaponics Place.

So this is the first system that we’re going to show you guys and this is the easiest system

to make. If you think of your bathtub, if you fill up your bathtub with water and it

gets too high it has that overfill valve right so you can never overflow your bathtub and

it won’t like leak on your bathroom floor. Well, this system, growing the lettuce in

constant water works pretty much the same way. So what many systems use is they may

use like some kind of raft system and they generally put this on like some kind of Styrofoam

but they choose not to use the Styrofoam here because the Styrofoam beads will break off,

get into the water and contaminate your system. So they actually have a nice piece of plastic

here and let’s go ahead and lift this guy up. So what’s happening is water is getting

pumped in over here on this side and if you look on the backside, I don’t know if you

can see that there but there’s basically like that overfill drain on your bathtub that’s

sucking the water in so water never overflows but always stay a constant height. The water

is kind of being a little bit aerated due to the flow of the water in and out and you

can see in these little net pockets they have here these little lettuces are growing these

little root hairs out and in these net pods the plants are just set in the cinder and

that’s actually just to hold the soil and also another reason that we’ll talk about

in a little bit but these lettuces will grow really well like this and another thing that

will grow well like this also is the water crest that likes to have it’s roots wet.

So now we’re going to show you the 2nd kind of system they have here. This is a system

that actually drains out the water and actually drains it fairly fast so that the roots are

not staying wet because most plants do not like their roots wet. They will succumb to

root rot, possibly other diseases if you that and that’s all made possible with this guy

right here. It’s actually called a bell siphon and how this works is simple. So we’re

going to go ahead and give you guys a close up to show you exactly how this works.

Alright, so how this system works is we got a grow bed with all the little cinders in

here and then they got this little, kind of mesh thing that does not allow the cinders

to go in and they have their overflow tube, much like the other overflow tube in the lettuce

bed. So when the water level that gets pumped into this bed gets high enough, which is almost