Indoor Aquaponics

This it the beginning of our indoor system we are experimenting with. We traded a guy an old sewing machine we were not using for the fish tank, the tubs were purchased at good will for $0.99 and on have off day so $0.50 each. Holes were drilled into the bottom and filled with the unwanted lava rock from our yard. The people who owned our house before us must have owned stock in rock and stone company. We let it run for a few days, then added fish. We will be adding some grow lights tonight. The grow lights were purchased at Menards for $20 for the fixture and another $20 for the bulbs. Fist time attempting this indoors so will keep you posted. If it goes well will switch over to Tilapia.



Why goldfish? We can buy 100 feeder fish at our pet store for $12.95. is not bad if something goes wrong. Plus they grow bigger and will eat algae, duckweed, and other scraps put into the tank. They are relatively hardy and will take abuse while we work bugs out of the systems.

Aquaponics greenhouse

So we have finally gotten around to taking pictures of the greenhouse and aquaponics set up. The first picture is what it looked like while we were digging the pond. DH had everything going to a 55 gal rain barrel until the pond liner came and we dug out the bottom.



The other pics are as it is today. We have harvested a lot of the lettuce so it looks a little bare. Also we had a pump failure and didn’t catch it for a few days so we had some plants die off. That and the incredible heat has lowered our production. We could still add double the plants which we hope to as soon as cooler weather starts. DH built a bridge, and added 55 gal barrels along the bottom edge for additional growth areas. Currently we are growing in the greenhouse romaine lettuce, Swiss chard, spinach, broccoli, two different types of basil, marshmallow root, cucumber, marigolds, unknown melon at this point we think honeydew, watermelon, 3 different varieties of tomatoes, some water plants to help with water quality and reduce evaporation, and duck weed. For those that don’t know tilapia and other fish will eat tilapia and has a very high protein content. DH heard that it was higher than soybeans but we really haven’t looked to see if this was true. In the pond we have frogs, tadpoles (mosquito control), couple hundred goldfish (test system until know will last over winter and not kill off tilapia),and crawfish (cleanup of dead organic matter on bottom. And they look cool.

If your are wondering about the stacked cat litter boxes…We were having difficulties with the pump and hoses clogging with sediment and organic matter. DH made this biofilter on the cheap. We had a bunch of these buckets around. Why go buy a 5 gal bucket at a big box store. These are free if you have cats and use this litter, and if not, there are tones in the recycle bin in your areas. So he drilled holes in the bottoms of the top buckets, filled with lava rock (surplus from yard) and places a pump in the bottom. We have a larger pump in the pond with better filters that feed the biofilter. The dirty water trickles down over the rocks where beneficial bacteria remove ammonia, and eat wastes. The water gets oxygenated and goes to the bottom bucket. That water is pumped to the top of the grow tubes. The grow tubes are 4” sewer drain pipes with 2” holes cut along the top. Overflow from the biofilter waterfall back to the pond for more aeration.


If you have questions or want a more detailed picture or description let us know. Do our best to help.

We all work on the homestead.

So we have even gotten the littlest redneck to do chores. Here she is washing dishes with her older sister.

And 20 minutes later telling us "we better be using paper plates tonight cuz she ain't doin dishes again.""you will face hot death from my light saber if you dirty one more dish!"

Delay in posting

Big delay in posting but been busy. The pond/pit/greenhouse is officially 100% in and operational in the greenhouse. We made a decision that since this was the first year and we have no historical data on a pond inside a greenhouse would do over the winter we didn’t want to invest into Tilipia this year. At around $200/100 fish and a required growing time of 6-9 mo it would hit us in the middle of winter. We decided to get another 100 feeder fish at the pet store and see how they all do. 100 feeder fish – $15 bucks. DH build his own biofilter out of recycled materials. This helps work with the fish waste, bacteria and plants to create a balance within the nitrogen cycle.

We took a trip out to Aquatic Designs a pond store about 50 min away. Way better than the local place we have by our house. Bigger selection, more fish, and really helpful. Lots of ponds of every size to get ideas from. We bought some new water plants to go onto the deck/off deck ponds (we added another in ground pond off the deck). We picked up some giant tadpoles for hopes of bullfrogs later this year or next. We learned that American Bullfrogs take around 2 years to go from tadpole to frog. We got them for algae control and mosquito control.

Egg production is lower and we think due to the warmer days of summer. The ladies spend most of the day in the shade under our deck. One of these days we will shoot some videos to post. The ladies are just hours of entertainment. It is like a relay race, game of tag, scavenger hunt, and comedy all rolled into one when we throw something out for them. Worde really cannot describe and even better if you have some cartoon music in the background.

The garden is going like crazy. We harvested 5 large yellow squash. The chickens harvested their own 4 or 5 squash. Our fault for not closing the garden gate. The first of 4 rows of corn will be ready any day. We planted one row every 2-3 weeks so that all of our corn won’t come on at one time. We harvested purple Cherokee green beans and Kentucky wonder green beans and cooked up a big pot in out crock for Father’s day. Sadly our outdoor broccoli just couldn’t take root. Either a bug, slug, or the ravenous vultures (the ladies) kept taking all the plantings out. We are harvesting hot peppers, and have bell peppers coming on the size of a baseball. Almost all of our tomato plants have tomotatoes, but are all still green. New “volunteer” tomato plants are found almost every time we go out to the garden. There has never been plants in these locations, last year it was grass, and no seeds were brought out there. Best guess we have 30+ tomato plants at this point, and could be any number of varieties. Just have to wait and see. The eggplants have flowers, and the onions and garlic are doing well. The potatoes are not doing so hot, but we will just have to wait and see. We harvested our third bunch of radishes, and just planted another batch. The lettuce outside has been fried by the lack of water and heat. The spinach went to seed real quick, and we were able to harvest a little, but only enough for 2 salads. We added some loofa plants in hopes of getting those for shower. Never grown before so should be interesting.

Now, in the greenhouse we have gotten 5 large cucumbers, two heads of lettuce, and everything is growing like crazy. The watermelon finally has a small fruit, and we have more poles for plants. We should be able to start harvesting 5-10 salads a week from the greenhouse or more. We have found that we can grow broccoli in the greenhouse, a and now have tomatoes, cucumbers, spinach, swiss chard, several medicinal herbs, garlic, several bunches of basil (harvested 3 times already), chives (which have been harvested at least 6 times already), water chestnut, zucchini, and water plants. The water plants grow like crazy, and we have given some to our neighbor, and would like to sell if anyone wants some floating water plants.

The medicinal herb garden is growing and blooming. We have taken some of the extra space until the herbs get going and put in peas, cucumber, peppers (which do have medicinal properties) culinary herbs, and along the fence watermelon, tomatoes, and more peas.

So we had some left over containers (due to get more soon) and we made big pot gardens on our deck. In there we have the water features, and now watermelons (we have like 10 fruit already) beans, culinary herbs, morning glories, marigolds, and moon flowers. We put in some mosquito plants, and put in a new wooden picnic table. The new pond by the deck has a walkway for the chickens to drink. Currently fenced off until our boarder plants can grow a bit more. We planted buckwheat in punches to hopefully keep them from getting into the cucumbers we put in to grow up the deck.

It’s a Growing

So we have been busy on the Homestead.  We have been in the gardens almost every days either weeding or planting more items.  We have corn that is almost chest high and should be getting ears on in within the next week.  The beans should start with pods very soon…there are tons of flowers on them.  We have now planted peas in the Herb garden and will probably plant more along the Vegetable garden tonight.

The herb Garden is growing.  We have added a variety of herbs from when we started.  We now have chamomile, more rosemary, marshmallow, feverfew, Calendula, Evening Primrose, Purple Coneflowers, more thyme, hot peppers and the DH even found a spot in the wood fence to add a sugar baby watermelon and a tomato plant, because we don’t have enough tomatoes elsewhere.  It’s funny about the tomatoes because we found 2 more volunteers last night in the garden in a place we never planted tomatoes before.  And the bigger kicker is I don’t like to eat tomatoes unless it’s in sauce, salsa or something like that.

The green house pond is now dug and the bridge is built, we are just waiting on getting the liner in and filling it up with some type of fish.  We are still debating on what fish to get.

The container water gardens have finally taken off.  We are growing duckweed like crazy now.  And the gold fish we got to try out are now about 2 inches long.

The “Ladies” are doing ok.  Our next door neighbor got 3 chickens off of us for his mom for mother’s day so the flock went down a few.  Then something recently got one of the Dominique’s and her back was cut up but I have her in a crate and she seems to be recovering quite nice.  This is the second chicken that I have nursed back to health.  One of our reds, Melvina, I thought was egg bound  so I did some treatment for her and whatever was wrong with her is now fixed because she is back to running around with those tail feather up. 

I will try to get pictures tonight if it doesn’t rain on us but we are making progress and just waiting for the “fruits” of our labor to reward us.

What's new on the macro farm

So what’s new on the homestead….

The greenhouse is growing like crazy. DH finally got the pH and water balanced to add fish. We got feeder goldfish from the pet store to see if things would work before getting our fish for eating in there.  In the meantime the nitrates and nitrites went craze which is just plant food. So exponential growth.

 The Pit (aka the fish pond) is 90% complete. We just need to add padding and insulation then the liner and we can add our fish to eat.

 The deck pond (aka his experimental pond) is supporting goldfish for a week now and no fish losses for 3 days straight. Most of the tadpoles have developed into frogs/toads.

 The medicinal herb garden has more plants in the ground and DH got some good deals on rosemary while out and about and now we have some to harvest and even sell  accept donations for our overage pots.

 We have dried a ton of herbs; basil, lavender, chives, lemon balm, spearmint, chocolate mint, curl leaf parsley, flat leaf parsley, peppermint, and oregano. All available for donations $5 per dried oz. All 100% organic, no pesticide, herbicides, or manmade fertilizer. We are going to attempt to go 100% organic and only in a real bad situation use Seven dust. Seven if you don’t know can be used on pets for flea control and tick control. It is relatively save, but like I said last resort. We also have a bunch of tomato starters if anyone would like them. $1.50/donation per potted plant. Most pots have at least 2 plants.  

 DH has been researching and learning about permaculture (planting with nature vs against). It is really hard to explain without seeing it. If anyone is interested in gardening podcast we recommend The Self Sufficient Gardner on iTunes. It is free.

 We are adding seedlings and planting to our vegetable garden almost on a daily basis. We got more blueberry pants (again DH got good deal), more garlic (again DH deal), more onions.

 We just started another 100 pots in the greenhouse, with another 100 waiting to be potted.

 100 more strawberry plants going in, and another 100+ garlic plants. Can you tell we like garlic. We learned something new with garlic. The bulbs you get in the store to eat look just like the kind for planting. But here is what we learned. Each clove in the bulb is a seed started. So we got 40+ bulbs. Reduced to 60% off.

 We are having to reinforce the chicken barrier to our garden. Dang ravenous garbage disposals are eating everything. Took out ½ the horseradish plant, ate every spinach plant in the ground and 3 lettuce plants that were close to harvesting. Last week they ate the watermelon rinds. I mean everything, picked clean. All that was left was the hard leathery rind, paper thin. We are thinking about raising meal worms to give them some extra protein. That is DH’s latest idea, well that, then not watering the garden all season, installing another pond and the list goes on.

 We checked out the Indianapolis downtown farmers market recently and it was enjoyable. We learned what other farmers were selling and the pricing. There is a wide range of prices, and some didn’t have the same kinds of things we do. We might look at selling at the farmers market next year. We may check out Greenwood’s farmers market this weekend. It is at the public library. The Bargersville flea market also has some good deals on plants, and assorted items.  

 We may start taking requests to grow items, or start your own plants in the greenhouse. If you would like help creating your own house into a homestead we can help. Share what we have learned, and even make a site visit to help give you some ideas. No yard? Grow on a patio. Have hanging baskets. You can have your own aquaponics system growing fish to eat and supply your edible plants in a window at your house/apartment. Even if you have a dog that pulls up your plants in your garden….you can still plant in other places or have a small cage around them. You know who you are….Any of this interest you, respond to the post, or send e-mail to the DH Rbeach_kk@hotmail.com.

So what are we doing to start our own Tea Party

Posted by Mama but written by DH

·         We have increased our garden footprint. – Last year we had about 20 x 10 so200 sq. ft. of garden space where we grew tomatoes (6), broccoli (6), cauliflower (2), jalapeno peppers (4), celery (4), lettuce (4). We finished the last of the frozen broccoli from our garden this January. We still have some frozen tomatoes and peppers, and like 12 jars of spaghetti sauce.

·         This year’s garden – vegetable, herb, pots, greenhouse, trees, misc.

o   Vegetable garden – 20 x 80 so 1600 sq. ft. of garden in here thus far tomatoes (12), eggplant (4), squash (12), corn (3 rows of like 40 plants), beans (3 varieties, 4 rows, 50 plants), radishes (60), broccoli (6), lettuce (6), celery (5), garlic (100), onions (100), Baking potatoes (20), red potatoes (20), sweet potatoes (3) and more coming as soon as seed starters get bigger from greenhouse. We will eat off the bounty, collect heirloom seeds, and sell/accept donations for seeds, starters, and vegetables.

o   Herb Garden – Wife decided we needed to go more natural and started a medicinal herb garden with culinary herbs thrown in. 15 x 30 450 sq. ft. Won’t even begin to know what all she is putting in there, but I know what I put in for cooking. Basil (3), rosemary (2), horseradish (1) , thyme (4), cilantro (3). We have more sprouting in the greenhouse. From this we will dry herbs, use fresh, collect seeds, and make essential oils from the herbs.

o   Pots – we are splitting herbs and extra plants as we get them. These pots can be bartered, sold, used as thank you for donations, gifts, and increase our growing space to areas that either currently do not have gardens, or are non-gardening area (deck, concrete etc.) We took mineral lick containers that were trash given to us by a friend, and turned into large pots on our deck. These are at least 2 ½ foot across and 2 ½ foot deep. We currently have three on our deck and are growing 4 watermelon plants and still have more space. I turned 4 others into a water fountain/garden on the deck. In here we may put fish, or other water plants. Have cat tails and horse tail in there currently along with like 30 tadpoles. Mainly to help clean water and get ready for fish.

o   Greenhouse – We bought a greenhouse 12 x 10 last year at a huge discount. In here we have a hydroponics/aquaponics system. Although still in development, it is working and growing. When complete we will have a 3 x 8 x 8 foot pond in the base for fish (we hope tilapia) and 100+ growing sites for plants. The fish waste feed the plants, the plants clean the water, and feed the fish. It is all a closed loop system and sustains itself. Totally organic, and you cannot use any chemicals or risk one of the balances for the fish or plants. The whole system is continually cycling the water and nutrients. We estimate we can produce between 200-1000 pounds of fish each year. That is only ½ the function. The other function is our plant nursery. We start all of our seeds in here and have gotten quite the system for growing. We start about 100-200 seeds at a time. We have a 95% success rate with all the seeds started. Currently on batch 2 in the greenhouse. The seedlings are used in our gardens, bartered/sold/used as donation gifts, gifts, etc.

o   Trees – three years ago we bought and planted three fruit trees. We transplanted on from another house we owned. We have an apple, pear, had a cornucopia (peach, plum, and others combined), and what we were told was a Kentucky peach. Last year we thought the peach dropped all its fruit and turns out the oldest of the girls had been eating them all summer. This year the apple has fruit, the pear has fruit and the peach has a bunch of fruit. This fall we plan on taking cuttings and rooting the trees to either plant on our property, pot for sale/trade/donation gifts, or use as gifts. We have to prune all the trees anyway, might as well use the cuttings rather than add to compost.

o   Misc. – here is everything we have added plant wise that is not captures elsewhere. We added strawberry plants all over property as ground cover. So anywhere in-between bushes or between flower gardens there is strawberries. They are prolific growers and produce fruit. Much better than just mulch or some other ground cover. We have about 60+ plants. We got our first harvest yesterday. 6 big strawberries. Cost us nothing.

We have 3 grape vines we put in this year. We cut down our existing cypress trees, used all the needles as bedding for the grapes and to acidify the soil. We have blueberry bushes we put in this year. We have about 10 red raspberry bushes and another 20 black berry bushes around the fence and house. These cost us nothing as we dug up from woods by family’s house. These just went in so not much production yet. We plan on adding about another 20+ bushes.

·         We have no credit cards and never plan on signing up for them again. We both have learned from the bad spending habits of others, which sent us into debt.

·         We changed our debt payoff plan from 5 years to 3 or sooner. Every extra buck goes to debt reduction or savings.

·         We now do a ROI (Return on Investment) for everything. If it will not save us money, or produce income, we don’t get it or put low on the priority list.

·         We use the app Gas Buddy before filling up. While I once said “it is just a few cents savings” I now say “it is $1 today, and that $1 adds up over a year”

·         We stopped or greatly reduced going out to eat. We pack lunches when we go to Zoo, Children’s Museum or other activities. One out for a meal is not that big of a deal, but 6 is a bit more and that adds up fast.

·         We buy used if we can. Why pay $100 for something you can get for $5. Example, I wanted some silicone muffin pans for making fire starters. New they are like $10 a piece. I paid $0.50 each. ½ price at Goodwill.

·         We have 16 chickens that produce between 6 and 12 eggs a day.

·         We make our own pasta. We had to do something with the extra eggs. After we sell, trade, give eggs away, still have more than we can all eat. Plus making your own pasta is healthier, is easy. 4 ingredients, (oil, salt, eggs, and flour) base recipe. Then you can use whole wheat flour, and add in other ingredients like spinach, tomatoes, garlic etc. Look at what is on the back of the box you buy at the store. How many things are in there that you cannot pronounce? Start looking at all the boxes you buy. What is it that you are eating?

·         We take our own school/family pictures. With 4 kids, and pictures offered at least 3 times a year and the cheapest package costing $30 that is $360 at least a year, not to mention sports pics, family pics, baby pics etc. We take our own with a backdrop we made, and print at CVS for a few bucks.

·         We buy in bulk and often repackage. For example a jar of pizza sauce is $2 and will make two large pizzas. We make pizza’s often. We buy a restraint size can of sauce for $6 and repackage in individual jars (we heat can them to keep longer) and get 8 jars per can. 8 jars in store costs $16 or more. Once our tomatoes come in this year we will make our own sauce, even cheaper! Ketchup, we buy can for $4, then refill ketchup bottles. We can get about 6 bottles out of one can. This would cost us more than $20 at store.

·         We make our own pizza. Delivered pizza is around $14 for a large cheese. We make ours for about $2 or less and is ready in <1 ½ hrs and that is to let dough rise. If we make quick version is ready in < 20 min. We buy bulk flour, yeast, oil, cheese, and sauce. All of the ingredients we use in other applications.

·         We can/freeze produce from our gardens.

·         We barter. Our 16 chickens cost us almost nothing. We traded extra produce from our garden last year to someone wanting to downsize their chicken flock. We did pay some because they are rare breeds.

·         Nothing gets wasted at the house. What we don’t eat the cat/dog gets. What they don’t eat goes to the compost for either the chickens, worms, or our garden to reuse.

·         We compost, and add everything to it, except meat/protein and oils. The compost gets grass clippings, leaves, weeds, table scraps, shavings from the guinea pig cage, anything organic. Then it produces great soil for next year’s gardens.

·         We use ceiling fans rather than air condition, and a fireplace insert for heat in the winter.