Day 29 Ramadhan - Stay at Home

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

Self-Study Today: Aquaculture + hydroponics = Aquaponics

2 years ago, I wanted to have a fountain at our balcony, to wake up at the sound of calmness almost similar to a waterfall. My husband wanted to make his own fresh water aquarium, his idea was that, anytime we feel like cooking a fish, just fish it from the balcony (but up to this day I still don't have the heart to fish our own pet 😲). We came to an agreement to build both and adding a portion for gardening as well.

So we fabricated something like this, within our minimal budget.

I would like to walk you through the anatomy of our project and ideas on what can be better:

1) The tank itself is a small plastic box that can fit part of our balcony. We may need to change it to a proper plastic that can withstand the volume of the water or it'll expand over time.

2) To get freshwater, use anti-chlorine and let the water stay overnight or a few days to settle. Depending on the number of fishes you have, we change half of the water once in two months and top-up the water from time to time when it evaporates significantly. Disturbing the fishes frequently can cause them to stress out.

3) Fishes can get stress if the water condition is not good. Naturally to check, see if there's any spots on the fishes, like if they are starting to get diseases. Another way is, if the fish tries to commit suicide by jumping out of the tank, it means the fish is stress. Time to change water or clean the tank.

4) The net over the tank is to avoid the fish from jumping out. If anything happens, we can't save it while we're out, the fish might get fried already by the time we get home.

5) It is better to limit giving fish food as in once per day only to maintain the cleanliness of the water.

6) In the middle of the net, there's the solar powered pump to create a fountain.

7) On top of the net there's two rack bar, to hold the rectangular pot that act as a hang on filter. That's where we grow vegetables. Though those rack bars look rusty already. We need to find another material.

8) The blue flexible pipe is connected to a submersible pump. It pumps out water from the tank to the filter. While the grey PVC pipe returns back the filtered water into the tank. We didn't use any special filter, just a long sponge that needs to be replaced once every two months.