Our Aquaponics Adventure

It began innocently enough; Jhoane was helping maintain our neighbor Susie's compost pot so she could share the bounty. She called me over to help with some heavy lifting and I saw a piece of 4" PVC hydroponics pipe laying among other unused items. Thinking it could be a simple endeavor, I began researching hydroponics as a means of helping us reduce the costs of eating organic veggies.

Greg at Aiyah's Garden, in Kapa'a, showed me the nutrients we would need to use unless we had a way to use water from a fish pond...which could be something as simple as a large water cooler kept under the house with some fish in it. But wait; the original owner of the house we're in had installed a pond and, growing tired of maintaining it and the sound of frogs, had filled it up.

So, having decided to restore the pond, the digging began. Not knowing the contour of the pond bottom I was really lucky to have started not just at the shallow end, but also on a raised section of the shallow end. Turns out, when the fellow filled in the pond he must have had a friend who needed a place to dump some concrete roofing tiles following the destruction of Hurricane Iniki.

I'm of the pale-skinned variety; hence the hat and pink glow.

After hitting the concrete tile pieces with the first shovel load, I decided to just dig to the bottom to see what I would be facing. At that point, the bottom was only 12 inches deep. The picture below shows how little area was dug up before filling two five gallon buckets with roofing tiles...all of which had to be dug up by hand.

Further luck; my friend Brian, a 36-year young, healthy Ohio-raised farm boy, was bored with his job and eager for another good hard project to tackle. (He had re-claimed a section of our back yard from the jungle on a previous visit.) After promising I'd save some of the work for him, he hopped on a plane and flew over from Oahu.

This was, actually, the 3rd and 4th buckets from this hole.

We completed the dig in about a day and a half, then filled the pond with water. The following morning, half of the water in the pond was gone, indicating a leak somewhere. It was a disappointing outcome after a couple days of busting-our-butts labor: Brian doesn't just work; he competes...who can work harder, longer? Truth be told; I love working like that, too; gets the job done faster and makes it more fun. Luckily, I probably outweigh him by over 75 lbs. (And, no, that's not mostly fat, ha ha)

Living on a little rock out in the middle of the Pacific, it can be a challenge to find things you need, like a concrete sealant for a leaky pond. I decided to apply a few coats of Red Guard sealant, then just re-plaster to protect the Red Guard. Getting the pond re-plastered took nearly a month as it was in the midst of probably the rainiest period we had experienced in years; parts of Kauai were declared disaster zones due to the flooding.

Now, the pond is finished. I've added some water lily, hyacinths, a waterfall pumped from my aquaponics growing bed, and about 3 dozen Tilapia, along with a lot of minnows and what are known in Kauai as orange mosquito eaters. I will be describing the aquaculture beds and documenting their evolution in a future post.

About Me

Aloha. I am Thames Ashley Goodwin. I am married to my best friend, the love of my life; Jhoane Goodwin. Our story has some fairytale aspects to it and I will surely expand on that later, but for now, I'll just post a picture of us in introduction:

We really do live a blessed life, on the island of Kauai, Hawaii. Waking to morning sights like this rainbow over Hanalei Bay is not uncommon. One evening, last year, we were lucky enough to see a rare, full double moon bow from our lanai. It lasted over 15 minutes and left me with the desire to learn more about photography.