RE: Benefits of having your own Aquaponic garden at home

Great write-up, thanks for sharing!

Last year we did container gardening, and brought some of the containers in when it started getting cold. Didn't help, the tomatoes seemed "programmed" to die then, and we had aphids everywhere...

A couple months before the frost, we tried planting two varieties of lettuce, in two locations: half (of both seeds) outdoors, and half in a hydroponic setup. We didn't have fish, so it wasn't aquaponic. However, the indoor lettuce grew about twice as fast and lush as the outdoor!

So I can definitely see the benefit to it. Perhaps we'll add that to our outdoor garden, next year? We're already planning to add chickens, and having fresh fish might be good as well.

Can you use salt-water fish? Or does it have to be fresh-water? (We love salmon sushi! :) ) My guess is you can't as the salt probably wouldn't be good for the plants.