About this blog

Welcome to my Aquaponics blog!

How I got started
One day after work, late in the evening, I was browsing YouTube videos when I stumbled across a catchy tag line of a suggested video. Up until then I had not heard about hydroponics or aquaponics, so I checked it out. I was immediately intrigued with the concept of a symbiotic ecosystem between fish and plants. It was around the same time that I was looking for a hobby that I could get excited about. I was looking for something non-technical and completely different from what I was doing at work. (Systems Design Engineering, highly technical stuff). I figured this would be the perfect fit and would provide me with the desired balance. Little did I know that this would turn into another system design project. Well, maybe it is just the way I tick. I can’t leave things the way they are until I have every last thing figured out. I passed that character trait on to my 9-year old son Mason, who is helping with the system and improvements. In addition I can show my kids (I also have a daughter, Sarah (12)) how vegetable and fish grow.

Motivation for this blog
Like with so many new things you get into, there are always more layers of complexity than you had anticipated when starting a new endeavor. It is all about the learning curve. Before I started building my system in October 2014, I did a lot of research on the subject matter. The problem I ran into was that there was a lot of conflicting information on the Internet, in other blogs and YouTube videos. People jumped to conclusions based on a single experience of what had worked or didn’t work for them. Sometimes it seemed that the information was highly subjective, based purely on opinion or preference. I have a healthy amount of skepticism paired with an analytical mind which is the driving factor for me to explore things more in depth. So, I wanted to share my “lessons learned” with anybody else interested in aquaponics and hopefully provide some valuable information and maybe contribute to the success of other aquaponics projects. Hopefully my blog helps to provide the answers to the questions you might have and that I couldn’t easily find. Additionally, my family is very conscientious of what we eat. Food is something we consume a lot of, every day. It has the most profound impact on our health, bodies and minds. Although my current plan is not to entirely “go off the grid”, it is nice to grow some really healthy food in your own backyard. And last but not least – I love fish. I mean I like eating them, but more so watching them grow and just having them around. It is a lot of fun watching your stuff grow once you get your system dialed in. I look forward to sharing my experiences and engaging with folks that are like minded. Please sign up for my blog and let me know what you think, ask questions, share your experience!

About me
My name is Markus. I was born, raised and educated in Germany. I currently live in Temecula, located in Southern California about half way between Los Angeles and San Diego. I moved to the United States in 1996 for what was supposed to be a one year project. Then life happened. I founded my own company, got married, had children.