Apply HN: AutoMicroFarm – An Aquaponics Farm / Garden for Every Backyard
We've been developing backyard-sized aquaponics systems for the residential market.
(Aquaponics is a system with a fish tank and soilless veggie beds. The fish waste fertilizes the veggies, and the roots filter the water for the fish. You get both fish and veggies for consumption.)
Our goal is to make it easy and simple: easy to buy, start up, maintain, modify, and expand. We would like to see every household with a bit of a backyard eventually become ~self-sufficient with AutoMicroFarm systems.
We're currently working on our fourth prototype, destined for my backyard. We also finished two experiments with using mushroom media that did were not successful, unfortunately (more on those experiments in this blog post: http://blog.automicrofarm.com/post/142436464771/mushroom-med...).
We have half a dozen friends and neighbors interested in the system, after they see the fully functional prototype. After completing the prototype, we're planning to find ~10 alpha/beta customers in my new-construction neighborhood of about 400 houses, then expand to the rest of the Triangle region in North Carolina.
Our website is http://automicrofarm.com/
We've been recording our efforts so far on our blog http://blog.automicrofarm.com/
Ask us anything, and thanks in advance!
I see that you've noted your location - North Carolina - which leads me to a question of sorts: Have you given consideration to more heat-saturated environments?
The reason I ask is because my area of Texas can get 100+ for consecutive days, and other markets might also deal with lots of sunlight causing weathering issues. I don't have a swimming pool but I do know several owners past/present who lament how their equipment needs frequent replacements due to the baking type effect. I'm hoping this is something you could consider in advance so that you can tailor your marketing or potentially innovate a structure using materials that will address customary failure points. Hoping for the best in your project!
Aquaponics actually works better in hotter places. You do need to account for the heat (you'll lose more water to evaporation, and cold-loving plants and fish won't do well), but since a customer in Texas would know their climate beforehand, that can all be taken into design.
That includes minimizing potential equipment failure by correctly placing it in the shade, etc.
We will sell backyard system kits, as well as one-time and recurring peripherals such as fish, fish food, plants and mushroom media inserts (if we get it to work), including inserts with food growing in it already.
We did build a smaller prototype, the AutoNanoFarm (http://blog.automicrofarm.com/tagged/autonanofarm), but ultimately decided not to develop it. We realized that it didn't help us move forward with our backyard-sized systems. There are plenty of smaller versions available (from http://www.theaquaponicsource.com/product-category/full-syst... to https://grovelabs.io/).
We'd love to donate our products (in terms of 10% of profits, or something) to developing countries, but we first have to get to profitability :)