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You don't have to feed the fish - you can also grow black soldier fly larvae and have them automatically feed the fish for you.

https://www.theaquaponicsource.com/blog/black-soldier-fly-la...




Indeed.

Permaculture practitioners have borrowed heavily from provably long-term sustainable aquaponics systems, though these tend to be larger scale (field-sized) and seasonal (wet season you have ponds, dry season you don't).

I haven't seen numbers on effectiveness, but similar to the article you linked, there's fly traps (easy to enter, hard to find their way out) that float on a pond - you put a stinky bit of old meat, cow pat, etc in there, flies lay eggs, fish either eat the larvae that drop through slats, or the flies when they touch the water. Similarly, small solar lights at night near the water's surface to attract more free food.

Geoff Lawton's 80 square metre aquaponics pond here: https://permaculturenews.org/2014/01/25/perfect-permaculture...


small error - Geoff's pond is 800 m^2, not 80(per his linked site). But thank you - this is my first time seeing his material. I've been doing forest gardening for ~12 years on my site, and am thinking about developing a nearby natural depression as a pond - Geoff seems like exactly the kind of person I need to study.


If you need additional input you might also want to check out Sepp Holzer [0].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFQUKQVwRXU


Ah, fat finger mistake.

Glad you like Geoff - he's a legend in permy circles, and for good reason. Check David Holmgren, Bill Mollison (the two co-founders of permaculture)... and you'll doubtless find lots of other people's work to investigate from there.

Permaculture pushes the idea of building systems that don't need a constant input of external resources... more difficult to design, but maintenance is naturally cheaper / easier, and more resilient.




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