Manny Barra's Aquaponic System Tour

Recently, our group had a meeting with Manny Barra, a self-proclaimed Berkeley hippie. This actually contributed to his establishment of an aquaponics system as he wanted to provide for himself and help contribute to his own food security. Manny has currently created two separate aquaponics systems, one during a Peace Corps mission in the Philippines and one in his own backyard in California. During our interview he gave us a tour of his home system which consisted of a tank for his fish, a deep water culture bed, two separate media beds with constant water height, a solid filtration system, and sump which collects up to roughly 400 gallons of water running through the system at a time. This home system was still being established at the time of the interview as it had only been constructed four months prior, thus meaning the bacteria did not have time to fully mature in the bed as well as his fish tank only currently running with 5 fish, which is much under it’s maximum capacity. These things together led to several nutrient deficiencies being evident in some of the plants he was growing at the time. This really helped solidify how important the nutrient balance is when constructing a system as Manny said that his plants would likely be doing much better if he had more fish as more nitrates and other vitamins would be available to them. As for the crops in Manny’s system, we saw a wide variety in the form of chard, lettuce, leeks, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower. He was sure to tell us that he was still in the process of determining what he wanted to grow as his media is recycled lava rock and expanded clay and he hasn’t yet determined exactly where he wants it to go as the system is still young and can be easily changed. To make the system more modular or expandable, Manny made sure to oversize his pump for the current system so that if in the future he decides to expand the system further, The inner workings of the system will be able to keep up with the increased load. One part of the system Manny made sure to make clear the importance of was his filtration system. The system he showed us had a solid filtration system constructed of five gallon buckets and a fine mesh and he advised us to pay very close attention to this aspect if we were to build our own system. Our time with Manny was very insightful to the group and helped us gather more information on aquaponics that we will be able to use to further develop our project.