"Aquaponics Without a Pump"

Oh dear Morgan Freedman here we go again.  Once again the people who didn't read the damned "manual" are trying to "think outside the box and damned be to your scientific reasoning!" Recently this pushed a now ELEVEN PAGE LONG discussion on it, the last six of which has been me futilely arguing with basically one guy--then making snarky comments because it's fun. I actually want to see what you come up with, by the way. It's an engineering problem that's damn near impossible, but I believe in people with way too much spare time. Also other people are adding to the discussion. Weird. All that aside, here's the opening statement of the thread:

"I'm throwing this out there for discussion, spawned by a recent blog, but something on my mind since first being interested in AP.  NO PUMPS. Can it happen, and how?
Why? Well, 'cause if we didn't need pumps or electricity we probably wouldn't use them, and AP might truly join the ranks as a sustainable food production method, and applicable to feeding the poor, saving the world, yada yada...and at the heart of it all, I'm cheap and lazy. I find personal victory in reaching the end goal faster, smarter, easier, cheaper than "how it normally done".
The only thing that comes to mind is a wicking bed of some sort. And I need to consult my book of wild ideas before I open my mouth.
Now I won't be a stickler about including some pumps using waste energy, or some low-tech mechanics, or human power, but try to avoid solar PV and windmill electricity (not that they are not excellent, but they are being done and discussed elsewhere).
link to blog: http://community.theaquaponicsource.com/profiles/blogs/a-no-pump-sy...

Pics, sketches, links, etc are always nice. Happy brainstorming" --Jon Par 

Uh... sure? Well, aquaponics isn't necessarily defined by the use of a pump, so sure. It is generally accepted that it should be recirculating--which really, really does necessitate a pump, but for the sake of discussion let's pretend I didn't say that. (AUTHORS NOTE: Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sherrif" started playing right as I wrote that.Coincidence? I think not.) Anyway, let's consider our options:

1. "What the hell is this drivel?" That's not an option. 
2. "No seriously..." if you're not going to brainstorm nicely, then please go. 
3. "But.." NOW. Don't worry, I won't break the laws of thermodynamics. 
4. "Mechanically push water using animal/human/air/steam power" Ooh! Sounds interesting. One possible ways is to hook your bicycle to an Archimedes' Screw--as suggested by the troll currently known as  KlaHaYa Gardens. Theoretically that sounds cool. The problem? That's a lot of freaking biking. Are you paying someone to do it for you? Child labor during the summer? Staying at home? Well, I have sad news, from a purely thermodynamics perspective--HOLY HELL THAT'S A TERRIBLE DEAL! You cannot possibly regain even .1% of that energy from the system. You probably won't need a gym membership anymore, but it won't save enough money if you're constantly eating. Plus, who's going to bike at three in the morning? Not me. Well, alright, what if we decide to torture the fish a little by giving them low circulation. NO! THAT IS SO FUCKING UNETHICAL, NO, I WON'T LET YOU! NO, NO FUCKING WAY! Well, that escalated quickly. Anyway, we can't shaft the fish. Heh, pun. So, what if you use steam instead? Uh, how are you creating all that steam? Solar water heater in Arizona? Perfect. You engineer something with a lower failure rate than a standard pump, I'm wisely shying away from that challenge. Next! 
5. What if you, like, put it on a see-saw, bro? No, that seriously hurts the fish. There is no way you can efficiently run this, if done correctly. Using steam/hydraulics would work, but I am constraining you to moving the sump tank around--the fish tank is staying level goddamnit! NEXT! 
6. Fuck it. Let's just do permaculture. This is my favorite, possibly because I suggested it, and more likely because it's the one that actually makes any freaking sense to me. I'm too lazy to reiterate, so here's me quoting myself for the first and last time: 

"Anyway, tinfoil hats aside, permaculture may hold the answer to this question. I remember reading a book by a Aus. Permaculturalist who built a giant pond, and put some trout in it. The pond was in her modest yard, and wasn't that enormous, either. Through diffusion, or osmosis, whatever, it would water some water-intensive trees, most of them tropical. Then, she had semi-aquatic plants for filtration. This is a traditional pond set-up, with some added temperate tree benefit. 

The way to improve on this is to remember that the Chinese already figured this out (or the Aztecs, whichever design you want). When we first learned about hydroponics or aquaponics we get the "ancients are all knowing" or "ancient technology is analogous" bit from websites (or at least I did). The Chinese used a available source of water to irrigate crops in the Southern part where this normally took place. This would create a pond for growing rice (a rice paddy). Some guy figured if you put carp in it you could get two crops out of one. So, they did. The practice spread throughout Southeast Asia.  So, you could think about re-engineering rice paddies with other crops. This practice is, still, very common. 

The Aztec method, however, is more familiar and simpler. Make a floating raft bed. What they did was ingenious. Banished by the dominant civilization to the swampy islands of Lake Texcoco (now Mexico City) they had to find a good food system. So, they gathered reeds by the shore and put the lake bottom onto it. Then, they put it out onto Lake Texcoco. So, you could just replicate this with Styrofoam, or reeds, and use net pots (yogurt cups) in your own backyard. Now, this isn't aquaponics. This is pond culture. You should always keep the stocking densities low, and I suggest using the dual root zone method with the plant, to keep nutrients at a good level.

Another idea is, well, similar to the one above, except it is a smaller, contained system. The now gone New Alchemy Institute had various ideas about greenhouse pond culture. Most of the experiments failed. But, the idea is like the one above, but aquaponics sized. The way I would think it would work is if there is a polyculture to break down solids, and a large surface area to tank volume ratio. I could see catfish and shrimp, or the like, eating from the same waster streams. Basically, you feed the catfish, and the shrimp (but less) and the shrimp will subsist mostly on algae and catfish "by-products". This could be further broken down by bacterial action, and the occasional clean every so often, to prevent solids coating on the roots. 

Anyway, I hope this discussion comes to a theoretical conclusion and a test, or just a test. I love empirical data. I hope to see some!"

 Wow, I sounded so annoying one year ago, seriously. Oh, anyway, back to what I was supposedly talking about. You should do this because I really want to see someone do that. Okay, maybe a different reason, um, nope. So, uh, see any good documentaries lately? Oh, wait, this isn't aquaponics. NEXT!
     
        7. That's all that's reasonably been suggested.
Well, I suppose we should just use a freaking pump and if we want to have a minimal impact, let's use micro-generated electricity for it. There, problem solved. Problem solved. PROBLEM SOLVED! Alternates will be accepted once proven. Good luck!

Soil Vs. Hydroponics (Nutrition Edition)

First things first: your produce will NOT taste like "water" if hydroponically grown. Taste is affected by a myriad of factors, not the least include whether it was grown in one particular substrate or another (assuming a few chemicals are controlled for). We should also discuss what "soil" means. Soil is weathered rock and organic "stuff." Organic stuff can include humus, living things, twigs, dead roots, excrement--basically anything from a living thing, including itself. Dirt, however, is just weathered rock. This does mean that aquaponic growbeds are soil, but that simply shows that the definition of "soil" is too broad for our purposes. So, we should just arbitrarily exclude hydroponics.

As to the nutritional value of certain soils there are huge differences. Soils can be low in certain nutrients, have low accessibility to them, and/or the opposite for distinct nutrients. One soil may be loaded with accessible Iron (Fe) but has a pH of 7.4--around where Fe becomes largely "unusable." Therefore, the plant--which is programmed by evolution (naturally or artificially) to spread its genes--will have to make choices about reproduction. Anyone who has talked to a pregnant, or formally pregnant, (which is everyone) should know that making offspring is incredibly taxing on resources--for members of the Kingdom Plantae as well as every other kingdom. So, a deficiency in nutrients which produces say, fruits, will result in a choice being made by the plant--produce more low-quality fruits, or fewer high quality fruits. Most flowering plants will choose to lower the quality of the fruits rather than risk something not eating it. For many garden plants, we made that strategy. Because what does a subsistence-farmer want more of?--calories or "nutrition." If you said "calories", you are likely correct. Better to be missing something in your diet than dead. 

Coincidentally, if the nutrient value is high, but skewed, this effect will show up as well--for a different reason. If nitrate (NO3-) is too high in a soil/solution, then vegetative growth will not yield to flowering growth easily. As you can see, nutrient availability is a determining factor in nutritional value. In hydroponics, it is exactly the same. Without certain chemical in the soil, certain crops do not have the "correct" taste--as is the case with wine-grapes and the snobbery thereof. While hydroponics cannot replicate those chemicals if their precise formula is unknown to science, hydroponics can replicate all the nutrients necessary for individual plants to thrive, and has been able to since the 1930s.

"But wait" you say, "doesn't the soil have a wholesome, organic, natural wonderfulness of mother-earth." Uh...no. No, it does not. There is nothing different about the NO3- present in a solution of water in-between sand particles of soil than NO3- present in a solution of water in between sand particles in a hydroponic growing medium. That's the wonderful thing about physics, chemistry, and science in general: parallelism. That means that the physical forces governing one thing is the same everywhere else. If a person can tailor build their hydroponic systems nutrient solution to a specific plant, then it is likely to be more nutritional--though it is possible to do that with soil, just harder. Also, and this is a particular pet-peeve of mine, just because something is somehow "natural" it does not mean it is somehow better. You know what's naturally occurring in plants? CYANIDE. Narcotics are derived, mostly, from one plant--opium. Since when did heroin become good for you because it is natural? Uh...never... Anyway, where were we, oh right, hydroponics. The truth is, I cannot make a judgement on its nutritional quality because it is completely, and totally dependent on the situation.

What I can do is tell you which is better for the environment and is probably much healthier for you: hydroponics. Hydroponics uses significantly less pesticides, and zero herbicides--because there are no weeds. None. Pesticides are a suspected cause of Colony Collapse Disorder which threatens the entire food supply supported by bees--so basically everything. In fact, when hydroponic farms do use pesticides, it is limited and largely inside the greenhouse due to a local parasite (aphid, etc.), so it does not contaminate the bees! In fact, many greenhouses are using parasitic insects instead of pesticides. Score one point for the environment! Oh, and many of those pesticides are being shown to harm human health in minute or, historically, significant ways! The clear winner here is hydroponics.