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  1. Ecoponics (I invented this, although others may have hit upon the same plan), is even better than aquaponics. It is more efficient of land, of water, of energy, labor, and nutritional inputs. Fish need to eat, but they can convert feed to edible fish at only about a 30% (high end) ratio. This system uses feed more effectively, because we feed rabbits first. They feed (indirectly) the fish. Then the fish feed the plants. We get rabbits, fish and fruit'n'vegetables out for ourselves. I installed a 10'x12' greenhouse from Harbor Freight. But it is unlike any other One Step™ greenhouse out there. It's probably unlike any other greenhouse, anywhere. It's hard to describe, but I'll give it a go: First, it's the only greenhouse I know of with a basement. We live in Colorado, and winters are harsh. We see temps fall to -20°F (-32°C), sometimes for several nights in a row. This means that there is no possibility for growing tilapia outside. So, our greenhouse sits above a 6½' deep pit. (If I were to do it again, I'd make it 8½' deep.) In the back of the basement, there is another pit, hand dug, this one 2½' square, and ten feet deeper than the bottom of the basement itself. The whole thing is concrete walls and floors, insulated from the surrounding earth. This keeps the water temp at 55°F (25°C) year 'round. We have to add heat, but it's a lot less than what would be required otherwise. It also gives us vertical growing space, again, below. The basement is the fish tank. It's filled with two-to-three feet of water. Tilapia jump, so we covered it with the floor (see below) and the rabbit waste system (also below) to keep them where we can harvest them. The pit (or "well") is for the pump mechanism. I covered it with a grate made of ⅝" rebar, welded in two pieces that hinge so we can remove it when necessary. This grid, like the others below, has openings for water piping and air lines. It keeps me from falling into the well when I'm harvesting fish. Three and a half feet above the bottom of the basement (not the well), there is a grate that serves as a floor. It runs down the center of the building and is only about 3½' wide and goes from the door wall of the greenhouse to about 3' from the back wall. Surrounding this floor are seven rabbit hutches which I built of 1x1" hardware cloth (walls) and 1x½" for the floors. We have four does and a buck with two larger hutches for grow-out pens. Each doe can have eight or ten (we usually go for four) litters (4~7 bunnies) a year. These hang directly under the grow beds (see below), leaving a fair amount of vertical space below them to clean out their waste. Waste is a big issue. We have not done it yet, but next summer, we will be using red wrigglers and black soldier fly larvae to clean it up for us. That will reduce our work from cleaning the rabbitry every other week to about once a month, and even then, the work will be a fraction of what we do now. Black Soldier Flies barely deserve the name “fly” because they don't really fly much at all. They have no mouth parts (adults do not eat: their energy comes from their larval eating), and and serve only one function: to mate and (for the females) lay eggs. A male might fly 10 yards in his lifetime, a female 20. They do not spread any disease, and they are shy: no buzzing around your head. But their offspring are tremendous eaters. They eat anything dead, except hair and bone. A bin full of BSF larvae will eat a 10” trout (cooked or raw) in less than 10 hours. They love rabbit poop, and they love coffee grounds (as do red wrigglers). Starbucks never gets any of my money, but they are a source of free fertility for our garden, and, next year, for our fish. The larvae also have an interesting “feature” that makes them ideal for this. When they're ready to pupate, they want to get out of the mess they've been feeding on for the past few weeks. To do so, they look for an inclined plan (30° is ideal). They expect to drop onto the ground below a tree trunk, but if that drop sends them into my fishtank, they're happy (until one of the fish eats it). Each female lays 300~3,000 eggs, so the supply is very, very large. The larvae are extremely good at converting their food into body mass. And that mass is 28% protein and 43% fat. Both are great for fish. (It's even good for people, but I haven't even considered eating them. Your choice may vary.) The extra distance above the fish tank I recommend would allow a “continuous flow” system for harvesting worm and larvae castings, rather than our batch system. As it is, we have to lift bins (from HD or Lowe's) over the lip of a wooden tray: again pressure treated, impregnated, and painted. The flow-through system would be very different, but no time to explain it now. The hutches hang from the grow beds. I built these from 2x12” boards, three glued'n'screwed together to make a beam to support the weight of everything (the floors, the growbeds, the rabbits, everything), and singles for the other sides and ends. Above those (about 2'3"), I built another set. This second floor is only a single 2x12” along all four sides. Between the two lower beds, I used rafter hangers to support a “wicking bed” at the back of the greenhouse for our lemon tree and (we hope) pineapples. It's about 3' square, but 23” tall. Again, the material is 2x12” lumber. All the wood was pressure treated, then impregnated with epoxy, and painted with blue, then white, liquid rubber. (I do not want to do this again.) The lower growbeds also have a grate floor we use to access the upper beds. They lie on ledges between the beds. We use HF magnetic tool holders to keep them out of the way when we're not walking on them. When we need to plant or harvest from the top bank, we put them down and walk on them. In the winter, we put carpet samples on this floor to help keep heat in for the animals and fish. (There is also a "swimming pool cover" (looks like heavy-duty bubble wrap) we use to insulate the greenhouse itself . In the summer, we cover the greenhouse with shade cloth. It can get really hot inside.) Each 11'9”x 2½' growbed is divided into three sections. The weight of the water (had we used a single section) would have collapsed the whole thing. Not a good plan. Each section in the upper growbeds fills independently of the others, and drains (by siphon) into the bed below it. This then drains (again, by siphon) back into the fish tank. We have about 120sqft of growing space for plants and have successfully grown tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, stevia, squash, chards, kales, beets, and others. (I'm toying with a way to grow sweet potatoes, but that's for another time.) Fruit is also an option: strawberries are among the best choices, but blueberries will grow here, too. Pumping water is hard work, and it would cost more than anyone can justify without Glenn Martinez's (olomanagardens.com) “burper” pump. That's why the 10' deep well. It runs on a small air pump and lifts 150~200 gallons per hour the 14' needed to fill the grow beds. Check his web site for details. He has dozens of ways to move water uphill, and this one is not the most efficient. But it is the one that will fit into our system. We will also be installing solar panels and a backup battery (NiFe, not lead-acid) to run it at night and during power outages. But that's another upgrade for another time. It looks like this, in terms of conversion: 100 lbs of rabbit feed gives us about 10 lbs of rabbit meat and 85 pounds of rabbit waste. The worms and larvae change that to about 30 lbs of body mass and 5 pounds of their waste (fertilizer). The fish change the 30 pounds of worms and larvae into about 10 lbs of fried fish. The plants use the fish waste to turn it into about 25 pounds of tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, sweet potatoes, and so on. We get about 65 pounds of food from 100 lbs of feed (the feed-to-food ratio), which is very, very good. The cost is high: I estimate that over the years, we've spent $25,000 on the building and all the parts. It will never pay for itself. But, when Kroger can't fill its shelves, we'll be eating fresh tomatoes and fried rabbit while our neighbors are eating freeze-dried soybeans. Lehi