Quote:
Originally Posted by Figaro
Very nice! Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're growing your bananas hydroponically?
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You're close: I'm growing them aquaponically, which is like hydroponics except that rather than adding nutrients directly to the water, I feed the fish.
My system has a 1,700 gallon fish tank and a 165 square foot gravel grow bed. Water from the fish tank carries fish waste through a set of channels in the grow bed, where it is eaten by worms, broken down by bacteria, and consumed by the plants. The resulting clean water is then pumped back into the fish tank in a constantly repeating cycle.
The bananas are planted directly in the gravel grow bed. If you follow the path past the bananas...
...you'll arrive at the tilapia tank. Here's a pic of them gathering near the surface right before feeding time:
Here are a couple that I netted out and set on a 5-gallon bucket for size reference:
Tilapia are delicious when raised in a clean environment. My favorite way to prepare them is to filet them, soak the filets in saltwater over night, then rinse thoroughly and either pop them in the Frydaddy (coated in onion ring mix)...
...or bake them with butter, basil, garlic powder, lemon salt, and black pepper. Tilapia have a strip of bony red meat along the middle of their filets, so when I'm fileting I prefer to cut that out, yielding half-filets that look like what you see below.