Strawberries in December

Last winter, I didn't get any plants because there was a big gap in the dog door that allowed sub-zero winds to blow into the room.  I don't know how cold it got, but it was cold enough that nothing grew.

We replaced the dog door this year, and, after a mostly unproductive summer (too hot), I'm actually getting strawberries!  I bought a cheap thermometer that records high/low temperatures over a 24-hour period.  So far, even with outside temperatures approaching zero, the room temperature has only gone as low as 48 degrees Fahrenheit.

I've only got a few strawberries and a couple of basil plants.  In November, I had a cantaloupe plant that actually flowered, but then it wilted.  Because I've only got one fish left, I turned off the water flow to the bed that the cantaloupe was growing in.

Aquaponic Strawberries - December 2012

Aquaponic Basil

My lone trout is getting pretty big.  I haven't decided what to name him.  "Silvery 1" doesn't sound right.  He's kind of fat, so I thought about "Fatty," but I decided that was a bad idea, since the grow lights in my window already have my neighbors suspicious.  Maybe "Big Fat Grandpa Fish."  The bigger he gets, the harder it is for me to think about...harvesting...him.  I'll probably get a new batch of little trout in the spring.  I hope he doesn't become Big Fat Bully Fish.  

I tried to take some video of him, but he just sat there...until I brought out the still camera and the flash freaked him out and he wouldn't sit still.  Crazy fish.  

Big Fat Grandpa Fish

Last Fish Standing

OK, I knew this could happen, and at one point, I even considered buying a backup power supply, but since we haven't had a power outage last more than an hour in the last four years, I never got around to it.
Well, that's what I get for ignoring Murphy's Law.  Today, during an electrical storm, the transformer in front of our house went out.  The power company repsonded quickly, but they "didn't have a transformer that big on the truck," so they had to go back to the plant in town to get another transformer.  Anyway, three hours later, our power was back on and I was pretty happy.  I think our utility company is awesome...even during blizzards, I haven't been without power for more than a couple of hours in the fifteen years I've lived here.  Unfortunately, I wasn't thinking about my poor fishies.  :-(

According to the guy I bought the fish from, cold-water fish such as trout are very sensitive to lack of oxygen/circulation, and need a constant source of air.  He told me that even a couple of hours is too long for them to go without some kind of air pump or circulation, and I guess he was right.

When my husband went downstairs to feed the dogs, all fish were belly up.  One guy was still breathing, so we left him in the tank, but the rest will be dinner later this week.  Within about 20 minutes, Silvery One was right side up and swimming around in the tank.

Silvery One

Last Fish Standing

So, I guess the other seven fish will be dinner later this week.  BTW, if you're thinking that it's unsafe to eat these fish, consider the fact that lots of people will drive at least two hours to go fishing, so if they catch a bunch of fish, drive home, and eat them several hours later, it's really no different.  As long as we know that they died from oxygen deprivation, which is what most caught fish die from, they're safe to eat.  It would be different if they all died from some mysterious leprosy-like fish disease.  Just thought I'd mention that, since more than one person has voiced concern over my questionable fish-eating practices.  :-)

Friday Night Fish Fry

Summer Update - Mutant Plants!

I've been really lazy about posting to this blog, so here's a quick update.

Fish - Poor fishes, you have such a bad fishy mommy...
As the weather got warmer, I failed to add water to the tank.  One day, the timing of the two grow beds filling with water, but not enough to trigger the syphon, aligned like a bad horoscope (does that even make sense?) and sucked up almost all of the water in the fish tank.  The fish were left in about four inches of dirty water, and seven of them died.  :-(
My son had been down there about two hours earlier and everything was fine.  Since the fish weren't stiff from rigor mortis, I figured they were still safe enough to eat, so I ate them...and they were good!  Then, a few days ago, there was another floater, so I ate him, too.  I think I've still got six or seven live fish.  They're probably about 10 inches long now.

Plants - In an attempt to reach real sunlight, my plants have been growing freakishly large leaves and stalks.  I can't find the picture, but one of my broccoli plants, which languished all winter, and grew a skinny little stalk about the size of a thin piece of yarn, suddenly took off and grew giant leaves and a stalk about the size of my thumb.  The weird thing is that the bottom of the plant was still the size of a piece of yarn, and was trying to support the giant thumb stalk.  I decided to take everything out and stick with lettuce and other leafy greens.  I transplanted the broccoli and a few strawberry plants in the garden outside.  I didn't expect them to do very well, and my low expectations were met the next day when a long heat wave hit and withered the plants that were used to 70 degree temperatures.  The broccoli plant is still alive, but the strawberries all withered and died.
One of the strawberry plants I pulled had some blossoms, which I didn't notice until I had already pulled them (actually, my husband noticed them and told me I should put them back in the indoor grow beds).  I replanted it indoors, expecting it to die from shock, but it continued to grow and has produced several berries.  One thing to note is that aquaponic experts recommend against planting flowering plants.  These strawberry plants were in the bed for about six months, so I didn't expect them to flower.  They were growing mutant-sized leaves, so I figured they would never have the energy to flower.  I would still go with the experts' recommendations not to plant flowering plants, but it was kind of cool to get some actual fruit from these plants.  I tasted one the other day, and it was kind of bland tasting.  Even more bland than a supermarket strawberry.  I guess strawberries love to grow in real sunshine.  Don't we all?

Mutant Strawberries - The smaller berries in this picture are each about an inch long.  Note the gigantic leaf - some of the leaves are larger than the palm of my hand.  Kind of freaky for a strawberry plant.

Speaking of real sunshine, I did add grow lights a few months ago, trying to get a little more growth during the winter months.  Apparently, one of my neighbors saw the lights and told her daughter she thinks we're growing...uh....an illicit plant which I shall not name because I don't want my blog to come up in the "wrong" kinds of google searches.  Anyway, I am currently under investigation for a clearance upgrade for my job, so I hope the investigator doesn't choose that particular neighbor to interview.  LOL  Of course, if she does, she is more than welcome to come over and see that all I have are legal, edible leafy greens and a mutant strawberry plant!  :-)

Daddies and Daughters...and Why I Love Trout

During the little crisis I described in my previous post, while I was scrambling around the bed of the truck, trying to grab the slimy, floppy fish, I noticed their beautiful markings. It made me think about how I have always had a fascination with trout. It's nice to catch a catfish, bass, or whatever, but I love catching and eating trout! Fresh trout fried in butter....yummmm.

I started to reflect on why I always have a specific craving for trout fried in butter, and I thought of my first memory of eating trout prepared this way...

One Friday evening, when I was about seven, my dad was in the living room, setting up his tackle box. I asked him where he was going, and he said he was going to the Kern River to go fishing. Of course, being seven, my automatic reply (which would have been the same whether he was going to store, going to the park, or going to the dump), was, "Can I go?????!!!!" I assumed the answer would be no, but it was my seven-year-old duty to ask. He looked at me and said, "Get your fishing pole and sleeping bag. I'm leaving at 4 in the morning, so you'd better be ready." After the shock wore off, I ran out to the garage and got my fishing pole and sleeping bag. The next morning, we left bright and early (actually, I guess it was dark and early) at 4am, with two fishing poles, two sleeping bags, a tackle box, a skillet, and an ice chest with beer, RC cola, and a stick of butter.

I don't actually remember the next part, but my dad has told it so many times, it seems like I remember it. The first day we were there, we each caught our limit pretty early (the limit was ten fish each). There were a couple of young guys camping next to us, and my dad started talking to them. They hadn't caught anything all day (or maybe they had only caught one fish each, I don't remember). They saw the long string of fish my dad was cleaning and asked how many days we had been there. He told them that we had just gotten there that morning, and we had each caught our limits by lunch time. They looked at him and said, "The little girl, too???" He said, "Yep!" Then he invited them to eat with us, since there was no way the two of us could eat twenty fish. He fried up the fish in butter, and it was one of the best meals of my life! I have never been able to duplicate the flavor of that fresh trout fried in butter at a campground at the Kern River....or, at least my memory of it.  Actually, it probably wasn't butter, it was probably Blue Bonnet margarine.  :-)

But I don't think the butter was the secret ingredient. I think the secret ingredient was the special attention I received by spending the entire weekend with just my dad, and the pride I heard in his voice when he told those guys that his little girl caught her limit that day. I do still remember sleeping in the back of the truck, looking up at the stars and listening to the sound of the river that night.

That is one of my best memories of growing up. A year or two later, my dad took my younger sister deep-sea fishing. I don't want to discount all of the time and energy my mom put into raising us, and the special times we've had with her. But I think for a little girl to spend a weekend, a day, or even an afternoon with just her dad...it's a really great experience and I think it does a lot for her self esteem. So, for any of you dads who have little girls, I encourage you to find some time to spend alone with your daughter, doing something that is special to the two of you. I'm sure it will be a memory that she will always cherish.

Hmmm...I wonder if my sister has a special love of barracuda???  ;-)

There are no pictures of that trip (a camera was not in the list of necessities on that trip), but here are some fish-related pictures from my childhood.

I was about three here - "helping" my dad clean his fish

My mom, my sister and me in the mountains near Bishop, CA

Fishing with my sister

This one's not really from my childhood, but I like the picture.

My helper "cleaning" the brown trout I caught on the Arkansas River

A Fish Story

About a month ago, I decided it was time to get more fish.  I had cleaned out the tank, just in case there was any fish disease (even though I was 99% sure the fish deaths were due to user error) and cycled the tank. 

I made the trip to Liley Fisheries in Boulder to pick up 50 - 2"-4" rainbow trout.  Boulder isn't really too far from Colorado Springs, but going through Denver - AHH!!!  What a headache.  It seems more like L.A. every time I have to drive through there.  Although, at least when traffic stops in Denver, there's usually a reason for it.  It just might take you an hour to drive the ten miles to find out what the reason is.  Anyway, the point is that picking up the fish is pretty much a journey.

I arrived at Liley and the nice man there filled up my fish "tank" (trash can) with water, poured in the fish, and I was off.  I got about 3/4 of the way home when I decided to pull off the freeway and get a soda. When I pulled off, everything was fine until I pulled out from the stop sign.  That's when I found out that I had not properly secured my cargo.  The barrel fell over, dumping all of the water AND the fish in the bed of the truck!!!  I went about a half mile and pulled into a Safeway parking lot.  The baby fish were flopping all over the bed of the truck.  I climbed into the bed, set the barrel upright, and tossed all of the fish into the empty barrel.  Even though I figured they would all be dead, I ran into the store (my pants were soaking wet with stinky fish water BTW), bought eight gallons of distilled water, ran back out to the truck and poured the water into the barrel.  At this point, I was thoroughly discouraged, and decided that I was going to give up the fish part and just do hydroponics because I couldn't handle another four-hour round trip to get more fish.

When I got home, I dragged the barrel out of the truck, trying to figure out what to do with it, when I noticed one little shadow moving around near the surface of the water. I started taking out dead fish and noticed that there were still several fish struggling, but still swimming and breathing.  I scooped the live fish into their new home, but judging by their appearance, I didn't expect them to survive more than an hour or two.  I had to take my son to youth group, so I changed and left, expecting to find a bunch of dead fish floating at the top of the tank when I got home.  When I got back home that evening, I was shocked to see fifteen fish swimming around the tank, looking nice and healthy.

One month later, those same fifteen fish are still alive and well.  At the time of my fish disaster, I would have been pretty happy if just one or two fish had survived, but to have almost 25% of the original 50 fish survive for at least ten minutes out of water, and survive the stress of the ordeal...that still amazes me!  My miracle fish are getting fat and sassy, as you can see in this video.  The water has been too cold for algae, so it's a lot clearer than it was in the last tank.

On the plant side of the house, not much activity until lately.  Even though I added some fluorescent grow lights, the water and air temperature in the room were too cold.  The dog door in the room had a little strip of rubber around the edges that gets pulled off when the dogs come in the room.  For most of the winter, the "arctic" air from outside was blowing in through this gap in the door.  A few weeks ago, my husband replaced the dog door, so the room stays a lot warmer.  Plus, I think (hope) the sub-zero temperatures are gone for the year.    Here are some pictures of the plants.

Plants look a lot greener with the extra light - before, they were a sickly yellow color

Broccoli

Cilantro

 The beans below are a good example of how important temperature is when growing plants.  When I planted bush beans this summer, they sprouted in about three days, then grew like crazy.  I planted these several months ago.  It took 2-3 months just to see sprouts, and these have been about the same size for at least two weeks now.  Not that the water temperature is closer to 50+ Fahrenheit, I think the plants will start to grow.

Bush beans

Cataponics

Since my cats are so fascinated with the fish in the big tank, I decided to make them their own aquaponics setup - aka "cataponics."  It will have a little fish tank with fish for them to watch and a "grow bed" containing cat grass for them to eat.  Technically, it's not really an aquaponics system yet, since the the tank and grow bed are not connected.  The little "water pump" that came with the tank is more of a glorified air pump, so it's not strong enough to get the water up to the grow bed.  I've got a few ideas on how to make it work, but I will probably get my husband involved since he's pretty smart about those things and always seems to see the most obvious solutions that I wrack my brain trying to figure out.

Fish Tank (No Fish Yet)



Nosy Cat 1




Nosy Cat 2 - Cat Grass Seeds on Grow Media (Fish Filter)



Decorative Rocks Cover Seed Might Keep Cats from Pulling the Entire Thing Out When They Eat the Grass









Fish Apocalypse....

So, apparently the fish were not doing the clean-tank happy dance in that video, they were doing the, "holy cow, what did you do to our pH???" dance.  At least that's the current theory, presented to me by both my husband and a friend who is an aquarium expert.

The day after the major water change, I went in to feed the dogs, and there was another floater.  I had planned on draining as much of the tank as I could into a clean trash can until I could see the bottom to see if there was a rotting fish carcass or something that was contaminating the water.  I did not find a rotting carcass, but instead 20 recently deceased fish lining the bottom of the tank.  It looked really weird because they were all facing the same direction, so at first I thought it was the light shining through the slats in the wood...but it was going the wrong way.  I scooped the net through the water and came up with about six dead fish in the first shot.  Some of them were pretty good sized, considering I was expecting a 1-2 year growth period for these fish (I just got them in September).

After disposing of the remains, I did a search to see if it's safe to eat a dead fish.  Some people said as long as it's not floating, and you think you know what killed it (and it wasn't a disease), they eat them.  My husband said, "You can eat them, but I'm not."  Since he has more logic and common sense than I do, I decided to follow his lead.  But, in hindsight, part of me wishes I had separated the floaters from the sinkers and taken my chances with just one....oh, well, there are more fish in the sea.  Or, in this case, the hatchery.

The Apocalypse

I emailed the guys at Liley Fisheries, and they said they have more 4"-6" fish (which is what I started out with), so I think I will clean out and cycle my tank and head back up to Boulder for some more trout...hopefully a little wiser in my aquaculture decisions this time.  I still don't know what started the whole fishy death march.  All I can think of is it started as shock when we took some out, and that led to a chain reaction, ending in my stupid overzealous cleaning.

Oh, well, live and learn.  If at first you don't succeed....buy more fish.

Rainbow Revival

Last night, I went down to take a look at the tank.  A single fish (which my son later named "Bob") was swimming around the top of the tank very slowly.  He bumped into the sides and didn't move much when I touched him.  Obviously, this is not healthy fishy behavior.  All of a sudden, another fish popped up to the top, head first, with slime and goo all over its head.  Then it just floated to the top.  Another dead fish.  :-(

The nitrite reading was still higher than my little kit can measure, so I decided that today would be a good day to do a partial water change, hopefully before I lost anymore fish.

I started out bright and early at 8:00am, which I realized actually was pretty early for a water change, since the water that had dripped from the hose the day before was now frozen....

I did 4 or 5 30%-50% water changes (I lost count).  The entire time, Bob was the only fish we could see.  Even with the tank 50% empty, I would shine my little pond light all around the tank, and only found evidence of one other fish.  I even moved a pole around the bottom of the tank, trying to detect any dead fish at the bottom.

BTW, Bob was not looking too good.  He has a damaged fin and sort of odd coloring for a rainbow trout.  Not very encouraging, but I figured at least if Bob lives until spring, maybe we can share a little trout pate or something.  And that seemed like a very big "IF."

By 12:30pm, I finally had the nitrite level down below 1.0.  This might actually be bad, since I might have replaced so much water that I have to cycle the tank all over again and deal with another nitrogen spike.  But, I did what I could to save Bob.  I still couldn't figure out what could have possibly happened to the other 20 or so fish...

A while later, when I walked into the room, I heard a big splash.  Was that Bob, rejoicing over his clean water?  Or trying to escape the too-clean water?  Or was it several fish???  I waited a while and walked back in slowly, making sure my shadow didn't extend over the tank, and I saw at least five big, fat trout swimming around near the top of the tank!  It's possible they were at the top because they were distressed, but anyone who has ever had a goldfish bowl can tell the difference between a sick fish and a happy-clean-bowl fish.  At least, that's what I'm choosing to believe tonight.  I guess we'll see tomorrow morning.  At one point, I saw at least ten fish swimming around near the top, disproving my son's rapture theory. 

Here is a short video clip for your trout-viewing pleasure.  Sorry about the bright light in the tank, but it was the only way I could reduce/eliminate reflection on the water.

Quick plant update - as I mentioned, my plants are not looking too good.  It's pretty obvious that the light from the window, especially in winter, is not sufficient to sustain healthy plants.  I purchased a couple of fluorescent grow lights at Wal-Mart for $11 each.  My husband is convinced that I am now on some government list of illegal plant growers, but I think the government is too inefficient to keep track of, or follow up on, that type of thing.  Worst case, some D E A dude shows up on my doorstep, I will be happy to bore him with a tour of my aquaponics setup.  Only instead of introducing him to my fifteen cats, I can introduce him to each of my trout, and send him on his way with a sprig of basil and a head of lettuce.

As for the cost of running the lights everyday, I calculated that running the two lights for 12-14 hours/day will cost about $10 each per year, so I was able to convince my husband that it's worth the $20 a year.   All I need to do is get a few good heads of organic lettuce and it will pay for itself.  At least, that's my theory.  If I'm wrong, I think I have to give up a few nights of space heater privileges next winter to make up for the 20 bucks.  Stay tuned....

Fishy (mis)Adventures Part II - Trout Rapture

One fish, two fish, dead fish....*sigh*.....

Recall from Part I, when we decided to take out a few fish to eat, my thought was, "what can it hurt?"  Well, apparently, it can hurt a lot.

The next day, January 4, I found a floater in the tank.  I don't know what caused the fish's death.  In reading about humanely treating fish, I came across a lot of catch-and-release articles.  A couple of things I learned - first, try not to take the fish out of the water at all.  It's like suffocating them.  Next, if you must handle the fish, make sure your hands are wet.  If you touch a fish with dry hands, you are effectively "burning" the fish by removing some of its protective slime.  Also, the protective slime is part of the fish's immune system, so besides causing the fish pain, you are damaging its immune system.  I read on several different sites, that often, if you release a fish and don't handle it properly, it might swim away, so you think the fish is going to live, but it actually swims away and ends up dying.  See photo below.  Note that this is on a standard-size dinner plate (10" or 12"? I'm too lazy to go measure it).

Big Dead Fish

Knowing that, when we removed the fish from the water, we tried to put the ones we were going to eat back into the water immediately.  Also, we did not touch the fish with our hands.  I don't know what caused this fish to die.  Maybe it was just shock.  But, it turns out, it was about twice the size of any of the fish we ate!  I think it was the granddaddy trout in our tank. 

OK, so one fish down.  I think I should be down to 30 or 31 fish at this point, so everything is still good, right?

Wrong.

Today, I go down to take care of the dogs, and there are FOUR dead fish floating around.  And a sort-of-alive one hovering near the top of the tank.  The nitrate levels are off the charts.  The water level was a little low, so I added some water, but the nitrite levels were still out of range of my little chart, so I did a 50% water change.  During the water change, yet ANOTHER dead fish comes floating by....AHHHH!!!  Frustration.

The only "good" thing about today's experience is that it has been unseasonably warm all week, with today being the warmest day yet.  It was about 65-70 degrees outside today, so at least I didn't have to do this in subfreezing temperatures.  It's a rather wet and messy process.  It did, however, take me three tries before I found a hose that wasn't frozen, but at least I didn't have to carry the water into the house in buckets.  My back is too old for that kind of work. 

Anyway, here's another picture of fish carcasses.  :-(

This is starting to seem like a rather morbid blog....

More Floaters

Now here's where the trout rapture comes in....this is weird.  My son and I were shining the light in the tank, and it seems like there are only two fish swimming around!  Hopefully, the rest are just so healthy and fast that they're avoiding the light every time we move it and hiding in the corner (is there a corner in an oval tank?  whatever).  Usually, we can see a bunch of fish shadows swimming around, but now we only see a couple, so my son is convinced the other fish have been raptured. 

I still don't know exactly what happened, but I'm guessing one fish died of shock and floated in the water long enough to contaminate the water and kill the other fish.  I just checked the nitrite level again, and although it's a lot higher than it should be, at least it seems to have gone down a lot since the water change.  I'm hoping that if I don't feed them for a day or two, the level will stabilize.

On a happier note, my plants are still alive.  Actually, I don't know that I would call the plants "happy," but they are alive.  They're a little yellow, and growing really slowly, but they are still alive.  If I decide to continue with this, I will have to come up with an artificial light solution.  Here are a couple of pictures taken January 3.  I think I planted the seeds at least two months ago, so you can see that the growth is extremely slow.  I think if I had planted these outside in June, they would be about this size within a week or two.

The good thing is that I didn't lose very many plants when we had the super-sub-zero temperatures a few weeks ago.  There is a gap in the dog door that lets in raw, cold air, and I was afraid it would freeze my plants.  I think it got down to about 40 degrees Fahrenheit, so it was pretty close. 

Bed 1 - Strawberries on the Right, Lettuce and Herbs on the Left

Bed 2 - Sickly Tomato Plant and Some Broccoli and Herbs

Well, that's about it for now.  Not much excitement this winter until recently, so there really wasn't anything to report.  Hopefully the next update will have better news!

Thanks for stopping by!  :-)

Fishy (mis)Adventures Part I - The Feast

WARNING - some of this might be a little graphic for the PETA set.  Or for squeamish people (like me) who prefer to buy their meat already dead and wrapped in cellophane.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After watching what appeared to be a few rather large fish swimming around in the tank for the past couple of months, we decided to take a few out for dinner.  The water is still too dark to see the fish very well, so we weren't sure if they were really that big, or if it was a trick of the light, but what could it hurt, right?

So, on January 3, my son and I pulled a few out with a net, but they were way too small, so we put them back.  We did this a couple of times, until we finally came out with a few that were smallish eating size.  Not wanting to allow my fish to suffer by letting them die of suffocation, we put them in a bucket of water and took them upstairs.  I had done a few searches on how to "humanely" kill a fish, and the most popular way I found was using something that stabs them between the eyes, stabs their brains, and supposedly instantly kills them.  I didn't trust my skill at getting just the right spot through the skull, so I decided I would try the next best thing (IMO)...chop off the heads.  I knew killing the fish would be the least pleasant part of the entire aquaponics process, but it's got to be done. 

The Six Fish We Decided to Eat

First of all, this method turned out to be very messy.  In hindsight, this should have been very obvious.  Usually, by the time a person cleans a fish, it has been dead for at least a few minutes, so the blood circulation has stopped.  Chopping the head off a live fish - blood spurts everywhere, all over my kitchen counters and all over us.  So, first lesson - don't chop the heads off of live fish.

Fish out of Water

Yuck

Ready for the Grill...or so We Thought

Next, just like the proverbial chicken running around with its head cut off, the trouts' nervous systems are still active, even after they are dead.  Flopping around, gills moving.  Ricky even found a little tiny fish heart that was still beating several minutes after the fish's death.  Gross.

Thinking the drama is over, we put the beheaded and cleaned fish on a cedar plank to be grilled.  Apparently, the nervous system was still active for longer than we thought, because when my husband went out to the grill to check the fish, a couple of the headless fish had "jumped" off the plank and onto the grill.  Weird.

Well, either way, dinner was good.  Fish, rice, corn, and naan.  I was so excited to taste the fish that I almost forgot to take the picture.  So, here is the half-eaten, grill-jumping fish.  Yum. 

Trout Dinner

Stay tuned for Fishy (mis)Adventure Part II - Trout Rapture....