Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NYC Apartment Aquaponics

erinmurphy.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 91 posts

Re: NYC Apartment Aquaponics

#71

Post by hooverd »

Gigachad wrote: post #20
NoLinkToMe wrote: post #14

I love the idea of hydro/aquaponics and built a system as a student more than a decade ago. It’s a fun project. But as a form of agriculture it’s a spectacularly bad idea at home. This setup is about 1 square meter of NYC space, that’s about $18k. Meanwhile agricultural land goes for about $2/m2, or 9000x less. Then you spend $700 in parts to set up the 1 square meter, even if you put the system on cheap rural Kentuc…

No one is reading this thinking it’s going to replace industrial farming. It’s just fun

No one reading it /here/. People pitch this stuff all the time/

Re: NYC Apartment Aquaponics

#72

Post by projektfu »

knollimar wrote: post #64
projektfu wrote: post #51

I know the ship has sailed, but wouldn't something like "zoohydroponics" be more descriptive than just changing from Greek-rooted hydro to Latin-rooted aqua?

Whwre does aquarium come from?

Latin, but it doesn't have mixed roots as a word.

Re: NYC Apartment Aquaponics

#73

Post by fellowniusmonk »

dandaka wrote: post #42
slfnflctd wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I initially looked into it as a potential avenue for sustainably producing some of my own food, but the math absolutely did not make sense. Growing a bunch of potatoes in a barrel would be a lot more bang for your buck with that goal in mind. To really optimize costs and labor, though, as you say, you need a greenhouse and/or a big old field, just like always. There are no small-scale shortcuts. Not yet, anyway.…

Why are people obsessed with idea of "produce their own X"? When we learned to specialize, we have achieved low cost, scale and sophistication.

1. Tomatoes off a vine crush anything in a u.s. supermarket.

2. I eat unwashed basil leaves and other greens growing outside, I eat them by first putting them under my tongue, my seasonal allergies (I am allergic to everything but mold) have plummeted over the last 3 years of this. The folk remedy of farmers market honey did nothing for me.

I did sublingual drops a decade ago and there was moderate improvement but for medical reasons I can't get a prick test again and I haven't been able to find a provider that will just make drops for me based off my original prick test.

It's impossible to find what plants capture the most environmental allergens on leaves or in edible flowers so I just have a collection, I figured that made more sense than licking a swamp cooler.

Anyway, I've gone from taking Allegra most days to only 2 months out of the year.

Re: NYC Apartment Aquaponics

#74

Post by mock-possum »

ryukoposting wrote: post #56
NoLinkToMe wrote: post #14

I love the idea of hydro/aquaponics and built a system as a student more than a decade ago. It’s a fun project. But as a form of agriculture it’s a spectacularly bad idea at home. This setup is about 1 square meter of NYC space, that’s about $18k. Meanwhile agricultural land goes for about $2/m2, or 9000x less. Then you spend $700 in parts to set up the 1 square meter, even if you put the system on cheap rural Kentuc…

Who cares? When you buy a couch, are you thinking "will this couch offset the value of the square footage it occupies" or "will this couch be comfortable and match my décor?" I'm glad someone is doing something fun in their home.

[flagged]

Re: NYC Apartment Aquaponics

#75

Post by ryukoposting »

mock-possum wrote: post #74
ryukoposting wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares? When you buy a couch, are you thinking "will this couch offset the value of the square footage it occupies" or "will this couch be comfortable and match my décor?" I'm glad someone is doing something fun in their home.

[flagged]

I, too, bought a couch I could afford. It was new, but it was a cheap one. It's blue.

When I bought a couch, I had a budget. What I didn't do was walk into the store and ask myself how this couch is going to pay for the square footage it occupies. It won't. It can't, that's not the point of a couch.

By the logic in the top comment, nobody should own a couch because it doesn't generate money that would offset the cost of the space it occupies. That's my issue with the top comment.

Nowhere in the OP is there a suggestion that they are doing it with the intention of saving (or earning) money. Nobody, no matter what their means, buys a couch because they think it will behoove them financially to do so.

OP made an aquaponics thing because they wanted to. I bought a couch to sit on it. God forbid.

And on that note, buying something cost-optimized to your space is itself a mark of privilege. My first couch was the nearest free one to my home, since I didn't have a car. It was much too big for the space I put it in. But it's what I could afford, which was nothing.

Re: NYC Apartment Aquaponics

#76

Post by dandaka »

voakbasda wrote: post #47
dandaka wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are people obsessed with idea of "produce their own X"? When we learned to specialize, we have achieved low cost, scale and sophistication.

As a small farmer, I will tell you that, without exception, home-farmed food is immeasurably better than the food in grocery stores. Appearance, taste, nutrition are all superior to store-bought equivalents. Cost is the only metric where store bought food wins.

100% with you on the taste and nutrition. I think you forget sustainability at scale. I love the idea of eating local food, but with current levels of personal productivity and home-farmed food costs, there is no way it could work for all of us.

Re: NYC Apartment Aquaponics

#77

Post by eptcyka »

ryukoposting wrote: post #75
mock-possum wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I, too, bought a couch I could afford. It was new, but it was a cheap one. It's blue. When I bought a couch, I had a budget. What I didn't do was walk into the store and ask myself how this couch is going to pay for the square footage it occupies. It won't. It can't, that's not the point of a couch. By the logic in the top comment, nobody should own a couch because it doesn't generate money that would offset the cost…

There is a dollar amount I am willing to pay to elude suffering- and there is an amount I will not. Try sitting on a floor for weeks and you will see the dollar amount you want to pay for a couch. And try booking a long haul flight- see what is your dollar amount you’ll spend to get more leg space.

Re: NYC Apartment Aquaponics

#78

Post by eptcyka »

dandaka wrote: post #42
slfnflctd wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I initially looked into it as a potential avenue for sustainably producing some of my own food, but the math absolutely did not make sense. Growing a bunch of potatoes in a barrel would be a lot more bang for your buck with that goal in mind. To really optimize costs and labor, though, as you say, you need a greenhouse and/or a big old field, just like always. There are no small-scale shortcuts. Not yet, anyway.…

Why are people obsessed with idea of "produce their own X"? When we learned to specialize, we have achieved low cost, scale and sophistication.

It gives you a sense of control, for one. I could repurpose existing software to do most of the things I program myself on my own time. Ikea is way cheaper than most things you can make yourself, but you end up planning around commodity furniture instead of getting furniture that fits your plan.

Re: NYC Apartment Aquaponics

#79

Post by ryukoposting »

eptcyka wrote: post #77
ryukoposting wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, too, bought a couch I could afford. It was new, but it was a cheap one. It's blue. When I bought a couch, I had a budget. What I didn't do was walk into the store and ask myself how this couch is going to pay for the square footage it occupies. It won't. It can't, that's not the point of a couch. By the logic in the top comment, nobody should own a couch because it doesn't generate money that would offset the cost…

There is a dollar amount I am willing to pay to elude suffering- and there is an amount I will not. Try sitting on a floor for weeks and you will see the dollar amount you want to pay for a couch. And try booking a long haul flight- see what is your dollar amount you’ll spend to get more leg space.

That's exactly what I'm saying!

It seems that there's someone in New York eluding suffering by messing around with aquaponics. Good for them.

Re: NYC Apartment Aquaponics

#80

Post by j45 »

NoLinkToMe wrote: post #14

I love the idea of hydro/aquaponics and built a system as a student more than a decade ago. It’s a fun project. But as a form of agriculture it’s a spectacularly bad idea at home. This setup is about 1 square meter of NYC space, that’s about $18k. Meanwhile agricultural land goes for about $2/m2, or 9000x less. Then you spend $700 in parts to set up the 1 square meter, even if you put the system on cheap rural Kentuc…

It's less about the square foot economics for at-home, and quite often the time to travel between growing space and home, if in the case of an apartment, it was somewhere else.
Post reply on HN