Aquaponics USA

Aquaponics USA Videos (of our Past)

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This is the original Greenhouse we built in Yucca Valley, CA. At the time, all we knew was we wanted to learn how to grow food, and because we were in the desert, we also knew we were going to have to be creative because the CA desert has a challenging climate that's real hot in the summer and real cold in the winter at 3,500 ft. up. So we went on-line to discover how to do Hydroponics.

Instead, we found Oliver's Mentor, Murray Hallam of Practical Aquaponics, and we also found our mission. Little did we know that day Aquaponics was going to become a business for us and take over their lives.

Because Oliver was an Aerospace Engineer, after studying Aquaponics on the web and spending a lot of time on Forums, he felt confident that he could build his own system.

He was still thinking it was a personal system for him and me (Grace). The system in the cartoon image on the left was the original System Design that he came up with.

It has the Fish Tank underneath the Grow Bed and is sitting on a stand made out of 92 pieces of PVC pipe.  It wasn't until we were installing four of these systems in the new Greenhouse that it dawned on us that we could turn Aquaponics into a business, and Aquaponics USA was born. It wasn't long before we discovered that stand had way too many pieces.

As the Founders, we gravitated to where our talents led us, and Oliver became the System Designer while Grace became the Marketing Director.

At some point, we realized many of our customers were from the East Coast where it was even colder than in Yucca Valley, and they wanted to grow their food indoors. We decided to build an enclosed Growroom so we could demonstrate indoor growing to them and to Teachers who needed Classroom Systems.

The newly designed systems no longer had the Fish Tanks under the Grow Beds so we decided to build a Fishroom for all of the fish. The processed Fish Tank water was plumbed under the ground about 100 ft. to the redesigned Greenhouse.

We installed a WET System in the Fishroom. WET is an acronym for Water Enhancement Technology. Together, the WET System and the Solids Separation BioConversion System kept the water in the Fish Tanks crystal clear.

Due to the crystal clear water we were able to design a Demo Vertical Growing System in the Greenhouse, which is a proprietary design.

NFT stands for Nutrient Film Technique. It entails water running threw a trough that has been designed for optimum grow out and harvesting of leafy greens. Below is what we were able to grow in our proprietary NFT Vertical System. There are 3 different kinds of lettuce growing on this wall.

After five years of successful operation, the original systems were torn out, the fish were moved to the fishroom and our Vertical Aquaponics System was installed with the help of our System Designer & Installer, Keil Plotczyk (seen below).

The picture here is not of the original Vertical system, which was a 60 degree Vertical System. The pictured system is a 75 degree Vertical System, which was installed six months later. As we already pointed out, this was an R&D Aquaponics Lab and a lot of R&D was going on.

As orders started rolling in for our PLUG & GROW™ Family & STEM Food Growing Systems, we decided we needed some help and hired Keil Plotczyk, IC, to be our Lead System Designer/Builder and Installer.

As it turned out, Keil is a hard working and talented tradesman with many skills, and he has handled a variety of jobs for us right down to this Spring when he played a key role in helping us move out of CA.

That's right, Aquaponics USA is now located in the White Mountains of Arizona. Keil spends most of his time in AZ, but still keeps a home base in Yucca Valley.

The fish were given to an Aquaponics farmer in Joshua Tree, CA. Our system was dismantled, and it was time to start over.

This 75 ft. x 15 ft. porch became the new combination Fishroom and Greenhouse. The Fishroom was placed in the foreground under the roof, and the Greenhouse was built in the sunlit area in the background of this photo.

This was a covered porch so the first thing that had to go was about 10 foot of the 15 foot roof. The ladder leads up to the garage roof where the Solar Panels, which we took off of the Yucca Valley roof, are installed.

We chose this home precisely because it had this already cemented porch area that we knew would make a great Greenhouse and Fishroom.

So here is Dan Hall, another multi-talented and hard working tradesman, taking down the solar panels he had put up a couple of years previously in Yucca Valley.

So why the move? We fell in love with a small town in the White Mountains of AZ, Show Low, where we found our perfect home. We now have 10 acres of land with a well, which sits on the best aquifer in the U.S., Coconino. Being able to make this move with a VA Loan was a dream come true. Dan installed these Solar Panels on our new garage roof.

We also love a challenge and growing vegetables year round at a whopping 6,000 ft. up. In the cold of winter, it is going to be just that. It snows up here, but the locals say that it dissipates quickly and there isn't a big build up. We'll let you know with Videos and pictures soon.

We plan to add more panels to this 6,000 watt array as money and time permits.

We are in love with our new home and our convenient Greenhouse right off the kitchen.

We couldn't close this story about Aquaponics USA without showing you our land. Us city slickers have gone all rural to the max now, and we're loving it. Two herds of deer visit often. Yes, you heard right, "herds". One herd had 16 deer, but one young buck was kicked out. He now has his own herd of four.

Stay tuned as this entire operation has re-constituted itself in the new Greenhouse and the new Shop where we build our PLUG & GROW™ STEM & Family Food Growing Systems. We brought in a storage container so we can enlarge our Shop to meet the demand soon.

So Oliver redesigned the AUSA Food Growing Systems turning them into durable, attractive and highly functioning Aquaponics Family & STEM PLUG &GROW™ Food Growing Systems for homes and schools.

The one on the left was located at the ExplorOcean Learning Center in Newport Beach, CA  where students from all over the U.S. could learn how STEM Food Growing Systems work.

We are Grace Sylke and Oliver Duffy, the Co-Founders of Aquaponics USA. We started our Aquaponics company in 2009 right after the collapse of Lehman Bros., which we interpreted as a warning that things were not right on the economic front in the U.S.

Neither of us had ever planted a thing in our lives. We were both what you would call city slickers, but it just so happened that we had made a move together to a much more rural environment in late 2006 prior to the 2008 collapse and we had 1/3 of an acre of land in the high desert of California. That's the most land either of us had ever had.

When that collapse happened, we came to the biggest decision of our life times. We decided to learn how to grow food.

Here's our completed Greenhouse in full Bloom. We built 6 Custom Deep Media Grow Beds that are 4' x 8' and are growing way more than our smaller Yucca Valley Greenhouse, which is also keeping us way busier.

In the foreground are Oliver's proprietary Vertical & Horizontal Systems that are capable of pumping out a vast amount of Lettuce and other Leafy Greens.

Aquaponics Systems grow Peppers like crazy and we have learned to Love Peppers just not the Hot ones.

These are Sweet Green Bells, and they are great for putting into all kinds of dishes. There is so much food coming out of this Greenhouse, I (Grace) had to learn how to Pressure Can.

We'll be doing Videos of Food Preparation and Canning in the near future. One of our favorite dishes is Swiss Chard with Peppers and Tomatoes. It all gets Stir-fried in a Wok!

Tomatoes also grow like weeds in an Aquaponics System, but you have to be willing to trim them often to get rid of the sucker branches that will otherwise keep the plant from producing the numbers of tomatoes that are possible.

This is our Big Red. It is about four years old and still producing the most delicious and sweet Tomatoes you have ever tasted.

In the front of the Greenhouse, we also have a row of 3 Cherry Tomatoes. Those plants are about the same age and still putting out big numbers of Cherry Tomaotes. The thing about Tomato Plants is they will take over a bed if you're not careful.

These plantss have a lot to teach us about survival because they keep growing no matter what.  Bent or even almost severed branches just keep growing and producing fruit.

You don't really know what Tomatoes taste like until you've tasted the ones fresh off the vine.

The VISION:  HOW & WHY IT ALL HAPPENED

You may have noticed this website does not use one of those spacious, open, modern, minimalist formatting designs. It's jammed full of important information about Aquaponics and our PLUG & GROW™ Systems, how it all works and what you have to know to make it work and keep it working.

This is a Work Horse Website designed in chunks of important information, named and tagged with strip banners so you know where you are with important pdf's dropped into recognizable color-coded repeating Boxes so you don't miss them, and our Teaching the Teacher and Family Member Guide, Jan, who lets everyone know they are on an important Teaching page.

So if you're ready to learn everything you can about Aquaponics you've come to the right place. Your next 3 stops after this About Page are under the Aquaponics Info (AP) Drop Down Menu where you'll find the Aquaponics Fish, Vegetables, Water and Grow Beds Pages.

TEACHERS, the Education Pull Down Menu is just for you! Let's Learn Aquaponics today!

Aquaponics USA Videos

of our Arizona Demonstration Greenhouse

Here I am (Grace) as my Cartoon Self. I'm here to introduce our Aquaponics USA Videos. Our

TIK TOK Videos are way more popular than our YouTube Videos so we suggest you go there first. Just Click the Green Box. We would love to have you as one of our Followers.