I've done this method with ducks instead of fish. It started by using the duck 'pond' to water the garden and realizing how great it was as a fertilizer. Once I began making my own bio-char it was pretty easy to soak it first before amending the beds. I was using kiddie pools (the big blue kind), a series of 5 gallon buckets and some hose, the whole setup was less than $50 if you already have the animals.
In addition to being a garden nerd I am also a fish nerd. We have been taking our spent filter media, overgrown aquatic plants and even use our old aqaurium water when doing water changes and using this with compost and compost teas. The water and filter media from a healthy aquarium smells almost exactly like great soil, seeing this operation scale up this idea is great, and I can see farms that also have a small aquaculture system using this as a really beneficial system. Great video thanks for sharing - your videos have been very inspiring and meaningful!
I've seen this product for sale online and really wondered how they inoculate the stuff at scale. This is all so cool and gives me a great idea to have a chat with the guys down at my local trout hatchery. Larry does an excellent job communicating the goodness of biochar. Nice video, thanks Farmer Jesse.
Nice! I use char with my chickens to make it for my own garden. What these guys should do in my opinion, find people who are currently terraforming deserts in southern Texas and Arizona. People are looking to ditch modern life and homestead and land is cheaper in the desert. The change to the desert landscape would be very noticeable I would think and if you can terraform it faster using your biochar then that's just good advertising!
This process is certainly part of a bright future, thank you for putting this video together Farmer Jesse and Crew! I'm so grateful for your timely calibre of nerdism, and well timed Dad jokes. Absolutely fantastic.
I have a bunch of different Colocasia and papyrus that I bring indoors in the winter. I have several stock tank fish tanks, 300 gallon is the biggest, Ill stack up cinder blocks in them to make shelves. the plants are in fabric pots, I put them on the shelves so the bottom inch of the pot is submersed, they love it, the only problem is spider mites. When I first did it this year, I noticed tons of tannins leeched into the water, the fish were happy, all the tests showed good, its just the water was a rust color, so I made a big batch of bamboo bio char, put it in my filter, and it did a pretty decent job of clearing up the water. I have a worm tower, usually I run my waste water through the tower, then I collect the run off into a bucket full of bamboo bio char. I'll stir that everyonce and a while, where the bio char against bio char grinds it down a little, when i have enough run off, I strain it through a 1/12 soil sieve and store it in gallon jugs. When i shake the jugs the super fine bio char particles sparkle, so I call it sparkle water. I'll dilute that down with more waste water and water my plants with it. I also mix it straight with used soil to help recharge it.
@@farmyourbackyard2023 does kinda make you think twice when somebody is talking about using the bioaccumulating filtration for fertilizer while you're staring at all those pvc pipes and hdpe totes
This is what I have been wanting for about 20 years but never had the time or money lol . I always thought that the coal powered plants should install a bio char function to their plant and use the bio char to clean the lakes that cool the turbines and after that let the farmers buy the bio char or give it to them . I can see a coal power plant from my back field lol . Thanks for sharing !
As always another Sunday Morning fun and interesting video and topic. Things to be learned and not going to Mars but perhaps working harder and smarter on saving Mother Earth!
I saw a college experiment on biochar and their optimal size was 5.3 microns. I am lucky to get it a quarter inch or less, so it is quite doable at scale. Hardware cloth sifters make it easier to size what is appropriate and what needs crushed more .
You could reuse the carbon from your fish tank filter by chucking it in the garden. How did this not occur to me being both an avid gardener and former aquarist....
Hey Jesse, Wouldn't the microbes be anaerobic bacteria because they have been in water? My understanding is that we wouldn't want this type of bacteria in our soil. Foop is used in the cannabis industry in our area (Maryland) for outdoor plants that need intensive, quick growth--high in nitrates. Does this translate to situations where we want long term soil improvement?
Oxygen in water, healthy soil microbiome will contain wide variety of micro organisms. Earthworms and other terrestrials in the biome will chew through the mix and convert it to plant available nutrients. It would only be a problem if the mix is applied too heavily. As with many natural solutions it is all about the dose. A little goes a long way when applied correctly 💚
No to the first question. Water is not inherently anaerobic, and the fact that fish require aerobic conditions in the first place is sufficient to conclude that the environment would support aerobic microbes. Furthermore, anaerobic microbes do have their place in the soil food web, so the idea that they are inherently undesirable is itself flawed, and even if the char is soaked in anaerobic water, and exposed to anaerobic microbes, they would still end up being displaced by aerobic microbes once the char is removed from that aerobic environment and exposed to air as microbes are practically everywhere and replicate at such dizzying rates that they will colonize a substrate to its carrying capacity within a matter of days. As for the second question, yes. Biochar is a stable form of carbon that can persist within the soil profile for centuries to millennia and beyond where it will continue to impart its moisture and nutrient holding and cation exchange capacity properties throughout the duration of that time.
I am for this process, but have one question. For the places that don't take advantage of this opportunity, they sound like they are polluting the places they dump into, but this is fish who live in the environment that its being dumped into (like the bay). From what I'm understanding, not using the biochar is the same as pouring cash down the drain. How is farm raised fish water ruining the waterways where fish are already living? Too much concentration?
Think of it like a feedlot for cows vs herds of bison on the prairie. Or a pig farm vs wild boars. Much higher density of inputs and outputs than natural systems.
@@wtfrankianso, i don’t know how to best use this product but wouldn’t it also be possible to end up with too high of a concentration of the bad guys within a gardens soil much like the bay? Thanks.
they use a lot of food in a small space. it creates vast amounts of nitrate, amonia and decaying organic matter. A little bit is good for plants but too much turns things into a discusting anarobic swamp. In Florida our canals get completely clogged with toxic algeas - the result too much fertilizer runoff in too small of a system to turn it into plants. With fish farms it can be the same thing, simply too much nutrient in too small of a space so it turns into an algea swamp, that can even become anerobic.
@@Edgeofthecontinent Absolutely. Not something I would worry about at all when applying a bit of biochar because it its job is to hold onto nutrients. But any kind of fertilizer or even nutrient-heavy compost can cause problems. Want to stunt blueberries fast? Put a bunch of nitrogen or salts in the root zone. Too much phosphorus can cause all kinds of issues. Everything is about the dose.
An interesting way to inoculate bio char. That maybe an interesting byproduct of aquaculture . Unless he's changing a small fortune for his biochar im not sure thats a viable business. From the look of the density of fish in his pools he is way under carrying capacity if he was using some of the std filtration processes available, which really wouldn't impact the biochar process.
2023 move in, beginning with a 25 chicken landscape crew, built 2 gardens with chicken access and 1 without. 2024 year of the soil, turning clay into garden soil. 2025 plans to add rabbits and a worm bin. 2026 add sheep? Tilapia? Pyrolosis station? Alone sux...
Take a deeeep breath brah, yer killin' it, we see. Worm bins under the rabbits solves a lot there. Add char to the bins to inoculate among castings. Look at KNF concepts regarding optimum livestock health and productivity. Make a pyrolysis station with a reliable water source close. Look at what I call "hillbilly kilns"...a 55 gal with a 20 gal inside, simple chimney. Fun to build and run at the end of a long day with a cold bev.
I could only listen to half of it. The material they start with is charcoal, not biochar. The end material maybe is "bio" char but is not inoculanted with air breathing organisms. My hat is off to these folks for a cleaner way to raise fish. But please don't pollute the social environment with nonsense about plant/soil ready products.
I've done this method with ducks instead of fish. It started by using the duck 'pond' to water the garden and realizing how great it was as a fertilizer. Once I began making my own bio-char it was pretty easy to soak it first before amending the beds. I was using kiddie pools (the big blue kind), a series of 5 gallon buckets and some hose, the whole setup was less than $50 if you already have the animals.
In addition to being a garden nerd I am also a fish nerd. We have been taking our spent filter media, overgrown aquatic plants and even use our old aqaurium water when doing water changes and using this with compost and compost teas. The water and filter media from a healthy aquarium smells almost exactly like great soil, seeing this operation scale up this idea is great, and I can see farms that also have a small aquaculture system using this as a really beneficial system. Great video thanks for sharing - your videos have been very inspiring and meaningful!
Dedicated goldfish tank.
Grow duck weed outside in buckets to feed said goldfish
Man I'm pumped you are covering this subject! Been advocating for this for a while but people just look at me cross-eyed Jesse. Thank you both!!
I've seen this product for sale online and really wondered how they inoculate the stuff at scale. This is all so cool and gives me a great idea to have a chat with the guys down at my local trout hatchery. Larry does an excellent job communicating the goodness of biochar. Nice video, thanks Farmer Jesse.
People using their brains to stack functions. Love it.
Nice! I use char with my chickens to make it for my own garden. What these guys should do in my opinion, find people who are currently terraforming deserts in southern Texas and Arizona. People are looking to ditch modern life and homestead and land is cheaper in the desert. The change to the desert landscape would be very noticeable I would think and if you can terraform it faster using your biochar then that's just good advertising!
This process is certainly part of a bright future, thank you for putting this video together Farmer Jesse and Crew! I'm so grateful for your timely calibre of nerdism, and well timed Dad jokes. Absolutely fantastic.
I have a bunch of different Colocasia and papyrus that I bring indoors in the winter. I have several stock tank fish tanks, 300 gallon is the biggest, Ill stack up cinder blocks in them to make shelves. the plants are in fabric pots, I put them on the shelves so the bottom inch of the pot is submersed, they love it, the only problem is spider mites.
When I first did it this year, I noticed tons of tannins leeched into the water, the fish were happy, all the tests showed good, its just the water was a rust color, so I made a big batch of bamboo bio char, put it in my filter, and it did a pretty decent job of clearing up the water.
I have a worm tower, usually I run my waste water through the tower, then I collect the run off into a bucket full of bamboo bio char. I'll stir that everyonce and a while, where the bio char against bio char grinds it down a little, when i have enough run off, I strain it through a 1/12 soil sieve and store it in gallon jugs. When i shake the jugs the super fine bio char particles sparkle, so I call it sparkle water. I'll dilute that down with more waste water and water my plants with it. I also mix it straight with used soil to help recharge it.
Great idea - intriguing possibilities
great shout out.
Biochar is pretty awesome
This is the future of sustainable food
I hope that the future of sustainable food does not rely on plastics or electricity.
@@farmyourbackyard2023 does kinda make you think twice when somebody is talking about using the bioaccumulating filtration for fertilizer while you're staring at all those pvc pipes and hdpe totes
I love ALL No-Till Growers videos!
Amazing! What about fish farmers using antibiotics? I am ignorant about this, but as livestock get these, and I would not want it in my soil...
Too cool. Hope that Salmon farm on the Eastern Shore MD utilizes this method.
This is what I have been wanting for about 20 years but never had the time or money lol . I always thought that the coal powered plants should install a bio char function to their plant and use the bio char to clean the lakes that cool the turbines and after that let the farmers buy the bio char or give it to them . I can see a coal power plant from my back field lol . Thanks for sharing !
Interesting video, thank you. I'd be interested in knowing if this system would work off of well water, or is the water too hard?
As always another Sunday Morning fun and interesting video and topic. Things to be learned and not going to Mars but perhaps working harder and smarter on saving Mother Earth!
aquaculture my favorite sector. thanks a lot
Cool video
Nice one guys
Love this stuff but soo expensive for anyone over a acre
Easy to make, run it through your compost.
I saw a college experiment on biochar and their optimal size was 5.3 microns. I am lucky to get it a quarter inch or less, so it is quite doable at scale. Hardware cloth sifters make it easier to size what is appropriate and what needs crushed more .
I've been playing with designs for just this sort of thing!
Good in, good out. What are they feeding their fish?
Thank you.
Beautiful facility!!!!!
#regenerativefuturefarming
You could reuse the carbon from your fish tank filter by chucking it in the garden. How did this not occur to me being both an avid gardener and former aquarist....
Been working with biochar for 14 years now. Welcome.
Hey Jesse, Wouldn't the microbes be anaerobic bacteria because they have been in water? My understanding is that we wouldn't want this type of bacteria in our soil. Foop is used in the cannabis industry in our area (Maryland) for outdoor plants that need intensive, quick growth--high in nitrates. Does this translate to situations where we want long term soil improvement?
Oxygen in water, healthy soil microbiome will contain wide variety of micro organisms. Earthworms and other terrestrials in the biome will chew through the mix and convert it to plant available nutrients. It would only be a problem if the mix is applied too heavily. As with many natural solutions it is all about the dose. A little goes a long way when applied correctly 💚
No to the first question. Water is not inherently anaerobic, and the fact that fish require aerobic conditions in the first place is sufficient to conclude that the environment would support aerobic microbes. Furthermore, anaerobic microbes do have their place in the soil food web, so the idea that they are inherently undesirable is itself flawed, and even if the char is soaked in anaerobic water, and exposed to anaerobic microbes, they would still end up being displaced by aerobic microbes once the char is removed from that aerobic environment and exposed to air as microbes are practically everywhere and replicate at such dizzying rates that they will colonize a substrate to its carrying capacity within a matter of days. As for the second question, yes. Biochar is a stable form of carbon that can persist within the soil profile for centuries to millennia and beyond where it will continue to impart its moisture and nutrient holding and cation exchange capacity properties throughout the duration of that time.
I am for this process, but have one question. For the places that don't take advantage of this opportunity, they sound like they are polluting the places they dump into, but this is fish who live in the environment that its being dumped into (like the bay). From what I'm understanding, not using the biochar is the same as pouring cash down the drain. How is farm raised fish water ruining the waterways where fish are already living? Too much concentration?
Think of it like a feedlot for cows vs herds of bison on the prairie. Or a pig farm vs wild boars. Much higher density of inputs and outputs than natural systems.
@@wtfrankianso, i don’t know how to best use this product but wouldn’t it also be possible to end up with too high of a concentration of the bad guys within a gardens soil much like the bay? Thanks.
they use a lot of food in a small space. it creates vast amounts of nitrate, amonia and decaying organic matter. A little bit is good for plants but too much turns things into a discusting anarobic swamp. In Florida our canals get completely clogged with toxic algeas - the result too much fertilizer runoff in too small of a system to turn it into plants. With fish farms it can be the same thing, simply too much nutrient in too small of a space so it turns into an algea swamp, that can even become anerobic.
Is there a recommended plateau in the ratio for adding fortified or pure Bio Char to a typical compost operation?@@TheWheelTurns
@@Edgeofthecontinent Absolutely. Not something I would worry about at all when applying a bit of biochar because it its job is to hold onto nutrients. But any kind of fertilizer or even nutrient-heavy compost can cause problems. Want to stunt blueberries fast? Put a bunch of nitrogen or salts in the root zone. Too much phosphorus can cause all kinds of issues. Everything is about the dose.
An interesting way to inoculate bio char. That maybe an interesting byproduct of aquaculture . Unless he's changing a small fortune for his biochar im not sure thats a viable business. From the look of the density of fish in his pools he is way under carrying capacity if he was using some of the std filtration processes available, which really wouldn't impact the biochar process.
Perhaps it is not just about making money......
@WhytePip well regardless it's not cheap to run even the small size operation you see in the video.
We filter our pond with charcoal. How did I miss the fact I could be using this in the garden? Dang it! But I know now.
❤❤❤
2023 move in, beginning with a 25 chicken landscape crew, built 2 gardens with chicken access and 1 without. 2024 year of the soil, turning clay into garden soil. 2025 plans to add rabbits and a worm bin. 2026 add sheep? Tilapia? Pyrolosis station?
Alone sux...
should have started rabbits with the chickens rabbits should always be on a farm at any stage of it
you have a plan, you are doing the hard work on your own it would seem, be easy on yourself. Remember why you wanted to do this....... 💚
Take a deeeep breath brah, yer killin' it, we see. Worm bins under the rabbits solves a lot there. Add char to the bins to inoculate among castings. Look at KNF concepts regarding optimum livestock health and productivity. Make a pyrolysis station with a reliable water source close. Look at what I call "hillbilly kilns"...a 55 gal with a 20 gal inside, simple chimney. Fun to build and run at the end of a long day with a cold bev.
cite your studies.
I could only listen to half of it. The material they start with is charcoal, not biochar. The end material maybe is "bio" char but is not inoculanted with air breathing organisms. My hat is off to these folks for a cleaner way to raise fish. But please don't pollute the social environment with nonsense about plant/soil ready products.
This is cool, but I wish these 2 guys hadn't basically said the same things.