A few months ago I presented our aquaponics system. We have been growing and trying different kinds of seeds to see what worked best, and we have recently been quite successful with lettuce.
This was quite exciting because we have a lot of trouble growing lettuce from seeds. They always end up being weaklings and die off before we can even call them lettuces. This time however, we just sprinkled some lettuce seeds in our system, hopelessly waited, and it worked! Beautiful lettuce leaves, fresh and exceptionally local as they come from our own kitchen. How fun!
I served this with a simple dressing, and it was delicious! The texture was soft, and the leaves melted in our mouths: it was actually quite similar to butter lettuce. It was the best lettuce we ate in a while! Great, great, great! We’re off to sprinkle some more seeds!
Here is what you need for the simple dressing:
- 1 tbs pistachio oil
- 2 tsp apple cider vinegar
- 1 tsp tamari sauce
- 1 tsp Dijon mustard
- salt, pepper to taste
I added some tomato, cucumber, black beans, and served this with rice. It was really good! I can’t wait for the new lettuce to be ready.
My Lighthearted Kitchen 
How much was the total cost of your unit, including the aquarium tank? I totally love it! Great way to bring some lazy gardening indoors.
Good question! In total, I think it costed us around 250-300$ (including the tank). We already had the tank, but you can easily find second-hand ones. Then we had to buy air pumps and water pumps. Another expense were the shelving units, that we paid 50$ each at ikea (we used two). We also ordered clay pellets as our growth medium, which are around 10$ a bag. The tubing was pretty cheap. The most expensive thing was the lighting. We bought 2 sun blasters at 50$ each. Of course, you can customize the unit to be smaller or bigger to fit your needs or budget 🙂 Let me know if this is helpful!
Thanks for responding. Yes, indeed. Helpful! Is there a ratio between tank size and your square inches/square feet of growing space? What size tank do you have in relationship to your growing space?
We have about 4 square feets of growing space for a 18L aquarium with 5 gold fish 🙂