Aquaponics Day 1

In a city of 22 million, "wet markets" are just around the corner, selling fresh veggies, mushrooms, some even fish, poultry, and grains. Fresh food is the question- how safe to eat is it? Rumors abound. The White mushrooms have been painted- that is why Chinese prefer the dirty looking ones. Or the fake eggs. Within Shanghai many expat turn their noses, and even locals whisper about the farmers who refuse to eat their own crop.

Many farmers grow their own food separately from the chemically-raised crops they sell. "I feel there is nothing safe I can eat now because people are in too much of a hurry to make money," said Huang Zhanliang, a farmer in Hebei.

One friends told me to never eat local seafood if I ever wanted to have children. After getting way too accustomed to having certain digestive issues, and having an in-depth conversation with a Aquaponics lecturer, we decided to give Urban farming a try.

Flower market: Changning Lu @ Wanhangdu Lu

We are also inspired by this and
this

So we headed to the flower market, headed towards the pet area, and began realizing how much we didn't know about Aquaponics. We asked tons of questions about pumps and food- the seller told us that the Japanese do Aquaponics, but not in China. After some diagrams and smart phone research, we got:

Glass fish bowl: 75 rmb

Fish food: 5 rmb

Ceramic pot (for plants): 20 rmb

Water pump and extra tube: 38 rmb

Gravel:

2 Tomato plants, 8" tall: 10 rmb

2 Cumcumber plants, 3" tall: 10 rmb

2 Tilapia fish (6" and 4"): 30 rmb

Total: 280 rmb

 The plant guy said we should start seeing veggies after 1 month, then one on a monthly basis until it got more mature. (This is assuming we kept them in soil)

Care for the fish! After a bumpy motorcycle ride in a plastic bag, our fish were pretty shook up. We also learned not to change more than 20% of the water, because it will cause stress. Whoops! The water was really dirty (you could barely see through the bowl) so we changed it. They were sad.

I removed the plants from the soil, soaked them in water to get all the roots untangled from the soil, then re-planted them in gravel, about 3" deep, to make sure they had plenty of support.

We put the pump in the fish bowl, and the tube from the pump came up through the center of the planter to the top of the gravel bed. When we plugged it in, we noticed the water draining back into the fish bowl was really loud. Splattering. So I cut up a disposable tupperware to create a "slide" that fit around the tube and sandwiched inbetween the planter and fish bowl. It worked!