Aquaponics/hydroponics/greenhouse

This morning, I have been reading up on the biosphere aspect of the fish farm, basically an aquaponics/hydroponics set up where, in a greenhouse dome of 3 levels, fish ( in this case, carp of various species) are grown in above-ground swimming pools, they eat surface level vegetation on the pools, solar panels are used to run pumps that take the accumulated wastes from the fish and pump it to grow beds for vegetables and fruit on the upper levels where the now filtered and oxygenated water is gravity fed back to the fish pools. The solar panels are also used to run the ventilation system in the summer as well as a small heat source in the winter.

Between the fish eating vegetation and the compost and waste products from the fish to fertilize the plants, it is pretty much a closed system that supports itself. Another variation I read about had a worm farm incorporated into it and the fish being used were catfish that ate the worms and the castings were leached to fertilize the garden beds.

This particular system was built in Canada and maintained a temperate zone climate pretty much all year.

If I had to guess, I would think the cost for something like this would be somewhere between outrageous to astronomical. It would be interesting to see if it would be possible to do something similar using scavenged/reclaimed materials on a smaller scale.

Just a thought.