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Chicago's vertical farm and food business incubator

Chicago's vertical farm and food business incubator

ECOLIFE’s Eco-Cycle Aquaponics kit cleans your aquarium, grows fresh herbs We all love to have a clean aquarium with a few fish inside it, but cleaning an aquarium, once algae starts to grow using nitrogenous compounds present in an unmaintained aquarium, is a difficult job. Folks over at ECOLIFE Foundation are now trying to couple two of our favorite activities, fish farming and growing fresh herbs, with a new aquaponics kit for aquariums, that uses fish waste and dirty water to grow fresh herbs while cleaning up the water for the aquarium. Dubbed the ECO-Cycle Aquaponics Kit, the system is designed to be installed on top of a standard 20-gallong aquarium. It comes with a submersible pump that brings in dirty water from the aquarium to a prefilter section where a rinsable and reusable sponge catches all solid waste and then a bio-filter brick performs some biological filtration. After that water is made to enter the grow tray where 13 net pots containing herbs of your choice are present.

'First to Market' Aquaponics System Receives Patent Pending Status for Portable Farms™ Aquaponics San Diego, California (MMD Newswire) January 29, 2013 -- On January 7, 2013, Colle and Phyllis Davis and Phil Estes received Patent Pending Status for their Portable Farms Aquaponics Systems' Modular Aquaponics System. This patent pending status is the culmination of 42 years of work in the field of aquaponics. This newly patented aquaponics system offers a revolutionary new standardized modular aquaponics system that can be shipped anywhere in the world and assembled on site by local workers. After installation, this aquaponics system grows harvestable greens within forty days in any climate and produces food year round. The Portable Farms™ Aquaponics System grows: • Organic greens (all forms of lettuces, greens and herbs) • Blooming plants (tomatoes, all variety of peppers, cucumbers, beans, zucchini, certain squashes, broccoli, etc.) • Farm-raised tilapia fish. This system requires no pesticides or insecticides. Yearly Production from Portable Farms™ Aquaponics Systems Contact:

WeFeedUs announces PA-based commercial aquaponics facility Home / Scale Up / WeFeedUs announces PA-based commercial aquaponics facility Scale Up January 22, 2013AlgaeIndustryMagazine.com arlisle, Pennsylvania-based WeFeedUs, a sustainable resource management company developing a commercial scale sustainable operation integrating the production of produce, fish, algae and renewable energy, has announced it has constructed a commercial aquaponics facility. The proprietary eco-process maximizes the utilization of nutrients, waste and other important natural components to promote the robust growth of sustainable produce, aquaculture, algae, and other co-products. The initial production facility co-located at the company’s headquarters occupies 3.5 acres of existing greenhouse structures, offices and agricultural storage, atop the second largest underground lake in Pennsylvania. The company is finalizing off-take agreements with several US Colleges that have world-class sustainability programs. More Like This… From The A.I.M.

Design Concepts | Arkfab | Green Phoenix Concpetual Design Arkfab's concepetual design is to use an integrated saprophytic aquaponics agricultural system for the production of gourmet mushrooms, greens and fish in a net zero energy and water urban farm facility. More Information about Arkfab's Living Machine Design Iteration Version 1 : Hoop House DesignVersion 2 : Shipping Container Design

Housing | FarmWorks The residential facility, St. Louis Stamping Lofts, is designed for the ex-offender and homeless population in a strategic effort to end the cycle of crime and homelessness. The fully ADA-compliant facility consists of 56 studio apartments in a four-story 36,500 square foot historic building and will feature amenities such as community space, laundry room, off-street parking, bicycle rental, security cameras, 24-hour front desk attendant, and secure building access. Local social services agency, St. Like this: Like Loading... Aquaponics | Locavore del Mundo Aquaponics. When I first started working with an aquaponics system in 2006, most people would look at me cross-eyed when I told them what I was doing. And while I still get that look at times, aquaponics is moving from the obscure shadows to bask in the limelight…well, the limelight of foodies and sustainable farmers. But a limelight nonetheless. It is one solution to growing food in a closed-loop system, but by no means the only system. Aquaponics grows plants in a soil-less medium, using effluent from fish tanks to fertilize the plants. Looking over the conical settling tank. The material inputs of an aquaponics system include the fish (at fingerling size), fish feed, seeds and substrate to germinate the seeds and support the roots of the plants, water, and energy to run the water pumps and air blowers. One of the simplicities of this seemingly complex process is that the water can flow from high to low, requiring the need of just one pump for an entire aquaponics system.

open source garden automation project What is GardenBot? GardenBot is an open source garden monitoring system. This site is a collection of tutorials for how to build things (like a soil moisture sensor), software for running GardenBot, resources, links, and more. To get started, you will want to browse the How-To section to see what is required to build the various modules. The ultimate goal of the GardenBot project is to be a complete garden monitoring and automation system. GardenBot is currently a work in progress, and we are always looking for volunteers -- please contact me if you'd like to help. Just so you know, there are several (many) other garden automation projects out there on the web. Is GardenBot a robot? The word robot usually is used for machines that move about. Who came up with this? I did... er, I mean hi. I discovered Arduino, and immediately became engrossed. Anyway, considering my interests, I thought "gee, it sure would be neat to use the Arduino board to control the watering in the garden".

Yves Behar moves towards the connected garden with Edyn First the connected home; now the connected garden: designer Yves Behar and entrepreneur Jason Aramburu have created products that monitor soil conditions and automatically water plants when they get thirsty (+ movie). Designed for use in a domestic garden or a small farm, Yves Behar's Edyn system uses two components to gather data about climate and soil conditions then irrigate the soil when necessary. The components connect via WiFi and communicate with each other to regulate and optimise the self-watering process. They also pair with a smartphone app that allows the user to monitor their garden remotely. Edyn is a smart garden system founded by soil scientist Jason Aramburu and designed by Behar's studio Fuseproject. The Edyn Garden Sensor tracks light, humidity, temperature, soil nutrition and moisture conditions. It tests the soil by sending out an electrical signal then measuring how it is altered or affected by water and soil additives, like fertiliser, lime or compost.

IBCofAquaponics Raspberry Pi Controlled Aquaponics Aquaponics /ˈækwəˈpɒnɨks /, is a food production system that combines conventional aquaculture (raising aquatic animals such as snails, fish, crayfish or prawns in tanks) with hydroponics (cultivating plants in water) in a symbiotic environment. In normal aquaculture, excretions from the animals being raised can accumulate in the water, increasing toxicity. In an aquaponic system, water from an aquaculture system is fed to a hydroponic system where the by-products are broken down by nitrogen-fixing bacteria into nitrates and nitrites, which are utilized by the plants as nutrients. This build uses the IBC method of Aquaponics, with modifications to include a Raspberry Pi for controlling a pump, solenoid drain, and temperature probes for water and air temperatures. All of my scripts are available at github.com, feel free to use them for your aquaponics setup. The video below shows the script execution towards the end:

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