Invented a Self Cleaning Dishwasher - No soap - No electricity --- Fish clean the dishes

Another epiphany has struck me like a bolt of lightning. There has been much debate concerning types of soap and methods of washing dishes in this forum. Some like electric dishwashers. Others despise them. Some like soap. Some think that a bit of dish soap will surely kill the kids. --------- Luckily, I have arrived to lay all of this silliness to rest. This simple "invention" will soon render both the dishwasher and the kitchen sink obsolete. ----- You're welcome.

Don't rip your kitchen sink out just yet. I was kidding about that part. It will still be used for other things.
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Fish Tank Dishwasher ----- Some fish aren't at all particular about what they'll eat. They will nibble on pretty much anything that is tossed into their tank. These fish would happily eat most things that we do. As luck would have it, that's the sort of stuff that we call "dirt", on dirty dishes. These dishes aren't dirty. They are foodey.

My plan, and I do have one is to simply place dishes directly from the table to the tank. No scraping, no pre-wash, nothing. A variety of species and sizes of fish in the tank, should ensure that most food waste will be palatable to one of them. Catfish, carp, and tilapia would all seem like good candidates to recruit as dishwashers. I don't expect that they will totally clean, dry and put the dishes in the cupboard. This would be more of a pre wash, to get rid of grease and any food scrap larger than a grain of sand. After a day or so in the tank, the dishes should be put in the sink and washed with very little soap compared to what would have been used otherwise.

The Tank --- I'm thinking that a nice big tank could occupy the empty spot left behind when you ripped out the dishwasher. It's close to the sink. Now, children will argue over who gets to clear the table. It's fun to feed the fish. The work involved in cleaning dishes has now been greatly reduced. You are welcome !!! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm going to cook up something good and greasy very soon and I'll provide photographic documentation as to the effectiveness of this method by this time next week. My dishes are going into a pond that has a variety of resident critters.

I thought of doing this awhile back. I would recommend scraping as much excess into the compost before putting the dishes in the aquarium. Greasy food probably would not be the ideal material for this experiment. Oil, in a free form, is something a fish would almost never (I would like to say never but it seems there's always some exception) find in it's natural environment. Even if the fish did go for the oily food, excess oil is going to end up on the surface, which will inhibit gas exchange and probably cause other problems. You could have an overflow on the aquarium to skim the oil off the surface, but then something has to be done with the oil because it isn't likely to break down quickly in the water.

If you're looking for an effective biological dishwasher try a dog, they will eat pretty much anything we eat and they do an awesome job of cleaning off dishes.

Ants.


Just leave your greasy dirty dishes on top of an ant hill. Come back a week later.

I think Worzel Gummidge beat you to it...

A great idea for sure... although the Japanese have been doing it forever, too.... http://en.biwako-visitors.jp/reports/harie/?PHPSESSID=877fe1652075863ca151050e08e368e0 . There is also a youtube video that I've seen, but couldn't locate it at the moment.

Jeff Sayler wrote:I thought of doing this awhile back. I would recommend scraping as much excess into the compost before putting the dishes in the aquarium. Greasy food probably would not be the ideal material for this experiment. Oil, in a free form, is something a fish would almost never (I would like to say never but it seems there's always some exception) find in it's natural environment. Even if the fish did go for the oily food, excess oil is going to end up on the surface, which will inhibit gas exchange and probably cause other problems. You could have an overflow on the aquarium to skim the oil off the surface, but then something has to be done with the oil because it isn't likely to break down quickly in the water.

Leave it to the Japanese.

This guy says he's been using this system for 10 years:

OK, somebody needs to explain this to me.

I've been invited out for dinner too many times in the last week, for me to get to this. I did ask if I could take their dishes to the pond, but was refused --- and laughed at.

On the oil question ---- Fish eat fat. Many times I've seen dead seals and other fatty things in the water. Thousands of little fish and some big fish feed off of them.
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That first Japanese entry was nothing more than an open gray water system. They wash the dishes by hand, with soap.

The other stuff seems to be a novelty grease trap. The quantity of grease would indicate that it's not all being eaten. It might be designed to show restaurant patrons the purity of their ingredients.
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I will buy one of those greasy chickens from a hot deli and completely coat some dishes tonight. I'll use some peanut butter, jam and other sticky stuff as well. There's no point in doing this with just vegetable juice or sugary waste. We all know how that would end. Dishes placed in plain water for a day or two, or a minute or two even, will come out pretty clean. Grease is the troublesome gick that detergents and other cleaners are designed to attack. I've never seen a TV commercial for dish soap where the lady says ---- "Look at how beautifully this miracle soap has cleaned the carrot juice off of my dishes". It's all about the grease.

Sorry for the delay. I'm having a very greasy lunch, followed by a secretive trip to a pond in Beacon Hill park.

yukkuri kame wrote:

Jeff Sayler wrote:I thought of doing this awhile back. I would recommend scraping as much excess into the compost before putting the dishes in the aquarium. Greasy food probably would not be the ideal material for this experiment. Oil, in a free form, is something a fish would almost never (I would like to say never but it seems there's always some exception) find in it's natural environment. Even if the fish did go for the oily food, excess oil is going to end up on the surface, which will inhibit gas exchange and probably cause other problems. You could have an overflow on the aquarium to skim the oil off the surface, but then something has to be done with the oil because it isn't likely to break down quickly in the water.

Leave it to the Japanese.

This guy says he's been using this system for 10 years:

Ok, I'm sorry but I'm going to have to call bullshit on this one.

First, goldfish are a temperate species, thriving in temperatures ranging from 60-70 F. They stress very quickly when temperatures rise above 80. Though extremely high temperatures will kill them, generally the reason they die in higher temperatures is from oxygen starvation. The warmer water gets the less capacity it has for dissolved oxygen. These goldfish are in water with absolutely no surface area open to the air, so there is no possibility for gas exchange, just that factor alone would cause them to die within a day in that volume of water.

Second, as I stated before goldfish are temperate fish thriving in temps between 60-70 F. They can handle short periods in significantly lower temps, but i'm pretty sure they would die almost immediately as the temp reaches 100 F. I've never tested their maximum temp because I've never had a reason, but I've definitely killed tropical fish with temperatures in the 95 F range. The guy in the video showed the temp of the oil to be >160 C, which is >320 F. If the oil is that hot then the water has to be at least 200 F, way beyond the temps that a goldfish could possibly handle.

Third, the bio-load in that water is HUGE! the amount of nutrients falling into that water is massive, even if the goldfish did manage to eat it, all the nutrients are still in the water. The ammonia level would rise so rapidly you would have to do daily water changes to maintain a water quality that is sufficient for the fish to survive.

If the goldfish were really in water that was covered in a layer of oil hot enough to fry then those goldfish would be sitting as close to the bottom of the water column as they could get in an attempt to be as cool as possible. You would also see them pumping their gills very rapidly in an attempt to get enough oxygen. After a few minutes they would die and float to the surface of the water and start frying.

I could be wrong, I have been before, but I'm pretty sure in this case I'm right

While Jeff was "calling bullshit", I was cooking and preparing for the experiment.

I've coated this plate with cheddar cheese, mashed in hard with my thumb, raw egg, coconut oil, butter, and jam. Couldn't find peanut butter.

I fried an egg in olive oil then mixed in peas and cheese. A greasy omelette, which I'm eating right now. The chicken will be devoured by 1 pm.

Preliminary results by tonight.

Perhaps bullshit, perhaps not. It looks like a very tall oil tank, with the heating elements at the top. The hot oil would stratify, so there would e a strong temperature gradient, getting cooler down the tank.

You couldn't see all the workings of the water part of the tank either - there may have been an oxgenating device of some sort, and even a cooling heat exchanger.

Yes it is a gimick, but it would be possible to build.

Dale Hodgins wrote:I've been invited out for dinner too many times in the last week, for me to get to this. I did ask if I could take their dishes to the pond, but was refused --- and laughed at.

On the oil question ---- Fish eat fat. Many times I've seen dead seals and other fatty things in the water. Thousands of little fish and some big fish feed off of them.
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That first Japanese entry was nothing more than an open gray water system. They wash the dishes by hand, with soap.

The other stuff seems to be a novelty grease trap. The quantity of grease would indicate that it's not all being eaten. It might be designed to show restaurant patrons the purity of their ingredients.
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I will buy one of those greasy chickens from a hot deli and completely coat some dishes tonight. I'll use some peanut butter, jam and other sticky stuff as well. There's no point in doing this with just vegetable juice or sugary waste. We all know how that would end. Dishes placed in plain water for a day or two, or a minute or two even, will come out pretty clean. Grease is the troublesome gick that detergents and other cleaners are designed to attack. I've never seen a TV commercial for dish soap where the lady says ---- "Look at how beautifully this miracle soap has cleaned the carrot juice off of my dishes". It's all about the grease.

Sorry for the delay. I'm having a very greasy lunch, followed by a secretive trip to a pond in Beacon Hill park.

Good example of an instance where fish would have the opportunity to consume fat. I would argue that there is some difference between solid fat coming directly from a carcass and the liquid oil that is usually used in cooking. I'm also not saying that they will not eat oil, I'm saying that it is not something that they would have access to in much quantity in the wild, therefore they probably are not adapted to a diet that is high in fat. Even if the fish do eat the oil, some will still end up on the surface and that will cause problems. If your water volume is great enough this won't cause any serious problems, but the volume of water necessary is greater than what most people could provide, I think.

Please don't take my arguments as criticism, I'm definitely looking forward to hearing the results of your experiment. Like I said, this is something I've thought about for quite a while, I'm glad somebody is going to give it a try.

What species of fish are you planning on using?

Michael Cox wrote:Perhaps bullshit, perhaps not. It looks like a very tall oil tank, with the heating elements at the top. The hot oil would stratify, so there would e a strong temperature gradient, getting cooler down the tank.

You couldn't see all the workings of the water part of the tank either - there may have been an oxgenating device of some sort, and even a cooling heat exchanger.

Yes it is a gimick, but it would be possible to build.

It is a very tall oil tank, I didn't see where the heating elements are. If they are at the top this is atypical for deep fryers, but that could be one aspect that would help this work. I'm still very sure that the temp gradient would not be great enough to keep the goldfish cool enough to survive. But I could be wrong.

You're right, we can't see all the workings of the tank, there could be external filtration and oxygenation. The sediment on the bottom and the particulates settling straight through the water column lead me to believe that there is very little current, if any, in the water. If there was external filtration you would see evidence of water flow. The sediment would at least be waving in the current, and the falling particles would be drifting in the current.

The dishes are in the pond. After half an hour, only two very small fish seem to have noticed. I'm in the busiest park around and this spot is the only place where this could be hidden from view.

I smeared chicken grease on the plate with all the other stuff. A clean bowl was covered only in chicken fat. The bowl that contained the omelette has only that on it - the greasy cheese may or may not suit the creatures in this pond.

All we can do now is wait. It's a bit like that Apolo 13 thing, except that this is more important. The fate of Procter and Gamble, Amway Corp. and other giants in the detergent industry are in my hands. (: This could bankrupt them all !

After 4 1/2 hours, the dishes are cleaner, but not perfectly clean. The squished cheese hasn't been touched. The egg and jam are gone. The coconut oil has been nibbled but some remains.

This time the only critter that I could see was this carp. I've been to the pond many times and never seen a foot long fish. A ten minute walk around didn't reveal others, so I think it's safe to assume that he was 4 feet from the dishes because he was attracted to that spot.

I'll check it out tomorrow.

Speaking of. I have a kitchen wall that needs to be renovated! I'm reading this thread now - but I may be lurking in the sustainable building and aquaponics threads too. Please forgive me and my total lack of experience with many tools.

I I like this Idea a lot! There's a place to post 'projects of your own' right? I'm getting getting some Ideas here! I'd love it if anyone would want to help me brainstorm some of this stuff. I'll take some pictures of problems and resources. Cool?

Landon Sunrich wrote:Speaking of. I have a kitchen wall that needs to be renovated! I'm reading this thread now - but I may be lurking in the sustainable building and aquaponics threads too. Please forgive me and my total lack of experience with many tools.

I I like this Idea a lot! There's a place to post 'projects of your own' right? I'm getting getting some Ideas here! I'd love it if anyone would want to help me brainstorm some of this stuff. I'll take some pictures of problems and resources. Cool?

If you're building a Fishwasher/Dishwasher, this is probably one of the few places on earth where it's under consideration. You might be a little early. I figure 2 days is reasonable cycle time. It's on the super, super, super economy setting, so it takes a while.

It was mentioned earlier that a dog could do this. I had a dog who enjoyed the job immensely. She spread vegetable waste all over the floor and pushed dishes clear across the room with her tongue. Worst of all there was a slimy "dog spit" residue that is just as hard to clean as grease.

pal lane wrote:A great idea for sure... although the Japanese have been doing it forever, too.... http://en.biwako-visitors.jp/reports/harie/?PHPSESSID=877fe1652075863ca151050e08e368e0 . There is also a youtube video that I've seen, but couldn't locate it at the moment.

This might be what you were thinking of. Part 2 about 3 minutes in.
Satoyama: Japan's Amazing Rice Fields and Farms

Dale Hodgins wrote:After 4 1/2 hours, the dishes are cleaner, but not perfectly clean. The squished cheese hasn't been touched. The egg and jam are gone. The coconut oil has been nibbled but some remains.

This time the only critter that I could see was this carp. I've been to the pond many times and never seen a foot long fish. A ten minute walk around didn't reveal others, so I think it's safe to assume that he was 4 feet from the dishes because he was attracted to that spot.

I'll check it out tomorrow.

Very much looking forward to seeing the results of this experiment. Don't be too discouraged if it doesn't work super well this time, many fish are reluctant to graze on unfamiliar food sources. If you make a habit of putting your dishes in the same spot on a regular basis the fish will become accustomed to eating this new food from these unfamiliar objects. Ideally you would want to set up a tank or pond near the kitchen with a varied community of fish, then present them with dirty dishes after every meal. I would bet after about a week the amount of eaten food increase drastically, as they become more comfortable with dishes and get more used to these types of food.

Another idea just popped into my mind. Shrimp or crayfish. I think they would be very effective dish cleaners. Being scavengers their digestive systems will be far more adapted to highly varied food sources, and they love to sit and pick bits of food off of stuff. I've even had shrimp come and clean my hand while i'm cleaning the tank.

If anybody does this in a closed system, like an aquarium, keep a very close eye on the nitrate levels. Be ready to do frequent water changes to keep up with the potential nutrient buildup. Of course this could be easily taken care of with a simple aquaponic setup.

Well, the fishwasher wouldn't work for me. I've got five kids, so just one dishwasher isn't fast enough. I've considered two.

Concerning the above post --- The fishwasher won't work for anyone who fails to try it.

I'm back at the park, 23 hours into the test.

The two bowls are almost ready to dry and put away. Really nice and clean. The plate was cleared of all loose bits, egg, butter, jam, and most cheese. Areas covered in chicken grease are clean. Probably a third of the coconut oil remains. The cold water makes it harder than the chicken oil.

Some of the cheese is visible on the bottom muck. It may have been removed by critters or it may have simply fallen off due to water absorption. No other food scraps were wasted. One bowl was moved about 3 feet. A larger fish may have nosed it along, just as dogs do.
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I'm happy with the results.

In a home aquaponic situation, I would choose many small fish of different species. Often, domesticated fish will compete vigourously when fed. They thrash around and push their way in to get some before it's all gone. Once they are habituated, this mechanical action could be all the pre rinse required.

Other supplemental feed could be tossed amongst submerged racks of dishes. Suppose we give the fish half an hour to devour what they will, then toss soldier fly larvae around. The fish would tend to hang around in anticipation and they're bound to nibble while they wait.
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The pond has very poor aeration and an unnaturally high number of ducks. No bottom dwellers are evident. The bottom is full of oxygen depleting leaves and sticks. In a managed system, bottom dwellers could share in the cleanup.

I'm going to try something in a barrel by my cottage next summer. I will eventually go with a big indoor system in a house. A small bay of an aquaponic system will protrude through the kitchen wall, right by the sink. Fingerlings that live in a few hundred cubic feet of water, will be fed in an area of around 15 sq ft.

There will be little need to haul compost to the garden. All food prep wastes both meat and vegetable could be swished from the overhanging cutting boards to the fish. Every few weeks, uneaten crud could be sucked up and out of the house with my siphoning pond vacuum.
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Here's The Main Way That I Expect To Do This -------- I expect to prepare many outdoor meals for large groups of visitors who arrive aboard my bus. My fish ponds will be one of the primary items of interest to visitors. The scraps from a few dozen to a few hundred meals per day, will be a drop in the bucket in ponds containing thousands of fish. The FISHWASHER/DISHWASHER will be a novelty attraction as well as a time and resource saving device. It will be on YouTube. It will get thousands of hits. I left this part until last since it lies well beyond what most readers would want to try at home.

Anyone know anything about crayfish? I hear those guys will eat anything. Just a rumor? I know crab will do for just about anything but a salt water system seems way way way to daunting for me at this point (I think... this fish thing - I have some experience but not in engineering them) Here's a picture of a 55 gallon drum (with pump) I've been brainstorming with. I can easily see having this outside my kitchen door on the deck and having a dish-rack that I can raise and lower into the drum to feed fishes

My biggest problem is always getting started. That and not having a credit card or bank account. Kinda limits the resources I'm able to take advantage of (no internet ordering )

Landon Sunrich wrote:Anyone know anything about crayfish? I hear those guys will eat anything. Just a rumor? I know crab will do for just about anything but a salt water system seems way way way to daunting for me at this point (I think... this fish thing - I have some experience but not in engineering them) Here's a picture of a 55 gallon drum (with pump) I've been brainstorming with. I can easily see having this outside my kitchen door on the deck and having a dish-rack that I can raise and lower into the drum to feed fishes

My biggest problem is always getting started. That and not having a credit card or bank account. Kinda limits the resources I'm able to take advantage of (no internet ordering )

Yeah man, like I said a couple posts back, I think crayfish would be very good for this. That 55 gallon barrel should work, I'd put the pump towards the bottom of the barrel facing up. That will provide good water circulation and reasonable oxygenation. Put the barrel in the shade so the little guys don't get over heated.

I plan to have a large brick terrace beside a pond, where most outdoor cooking and eating occur. Most food scraps, including bones and meat will be scraped into the pond. Catfish will eat meat waste, carp, tilapia and others will do their part. This area will be mucked out regularly.

A separate raised pond will house the Fishwasher / Dishwasher. A stacked stone side to this pond will be on the edge of the terrace. I have a big commercial double stainless sink from a restaurant demolition. It will be mounted beside this pond, so that final cleaning happens within arm's reach of the device. Graywater from the sink will flow into the giant lower pond.

A solar water heater will reside on the roof of a gazebo. A rocket stove heater will serve as backup. Bio-gas may be burned directly against the bottom of the sink. No venting required.

Sounds awesome man! Your preliminary test turned out VERY promising. This is such a cool concept, I'm glad you're going somewhere with it. Keep us posted!

Cool concept, but really it's way overdoing it for simply washing dishes.

For my low-tech graywater system I minimize soap by just not using it if the dishes aren't oily or greasy. I just scrub the dish with a sponge and water. For a toast plate, a tea cup, a sandwich plate, salad, etc, this is sufficient for me. I'm not sharing these dishes with a big group so there's no sterilization issue. For greasy dishes, often a little bit of hot water will do the job. Sometimes I use a scrubby but still no soap. And then occasionally soap is necessary so I minimize its use by first rinsing the dish as well as I can so the soap won't be acting on unnecessary food particles, and then I use a little soap. I like to use a little soap on glasses to make them sparkle.

Works fine for me and doesn't seem to take any longer than washing dishes with soap, which I always do for the whole time I'm back in the US with family.

This is a really neat concept. I've seen the dog thing work too. A friend uses it to get dishes clean sometimes while also giving her dog a treat. He loves ice cream I think this or just a good scrub would work for removing solid waste from plates but I'm a stickler for sanitization. As far as I'm concerned dishwashers are only good for the heat/steam that sanitizes, the actual wash is usually inefficient and wasteful. What I wonder is if there's be a way to replicate that steam/heat manually to take care of sanitization after the fishes dobthier part.

Rebecca Norman wrote:Cool concept, but really it's way overdoing it for simply washing dishes.

This is a system for those who want fish anyway. I already plan to have fish in the house, so it's just a matter of providing a big rinsing sink that they have access to. I'm not even a little bit concerned about the minor expense of dish soap or the idea that it's toxic. For me, it's about saving labor and mess by never having to scrape plates, take out compost or pre rinse dishes. It's about the convenience of being able to postpone dishwashing for weeks if that's what I want to do. It's also about feeding the fish.

There's a free pile of plates and cups at most yard sales. I may have a couple hundred items in circulation. When it's just me and a few guests, I would be able to avoid doing dishes for a month. I generally let them pile up until the sink is over full. At 49, I'm unlikely to change and start washing dishes 10 times a day. Instead of the dishes sitting around for days, feeding flies while scraps dry out and stick to the plates, a fishwasher would be the perfect place to store them.

With the addition of bottom feeders such as crayfish and some sort of sucker fish, it should be possible to get even better results than were achieved in the pond. When I finally decide to wash some dishes, they can all be done at the same time. I've washed big runs of pre soaked dishes in a giant sink when I worked in the kitchen at a mine. The labor per unit is much less when a large number are done at once.

Then there's table clearing. Every kid and most adults would enjoy placing their dishes in a tank and then watching the hungry critters through the glass. There will be a little light.

It's a year and a day later. I have tried mosquito larvae dish cleaning, waterfalls dish cleaning and leave them in a sunny tub of algae dish cleaning.

The waterfall works really well, but it's not convenient at about 120 paces from the door. The others work about as well as soaking in plain water.

I still think that ash is very efficient for grease etc... Been used for a loooong time

I love this idea! I feed slugs to my bluegill every time I'm around my aquaponics setup.

In Thailand there are these fish that they keep in tanks to clean your feet. They are minnows, hundreds of them, and they eat the dead skin off your feet in about 15-20 minutes. My feet were baby-soft. It was incredible. Some people found it tickly/freaky, but they were very effective. I think you want some of those!

CA Drought is making me rethink water useable. Using a portable dishwasher means I use 1 dishpan of water for the whole dishwasher. Instead of rinsing, I'm scraping, then putting the dishes in buckets of water. After soaking the dishes for several hours, wiping, they are clean enough to go into the dishwasher. The soak water goes to plants outside. It's really working well. I'm still looking for a dish washer soap so that I can use that soapy water as grey water; if I find that, I can save and reuse the dishwasher water, too.

I can see how this could be a sollution to some people and a headache to others. In my small 2 person household in a tiny 30 sq meter apartment there is no space for a fishtank and 40 plates... But I can imagine that this would be an amazing sollution to the 'how to get 20 people to live under one roof without stabbing eachother' dilemma! I have lived only in groups for over 20 years and to be honest, the fights either start on dishes or toilets.
I agree with what you say, you cannot teach a 40 year old new tricks, so the more sensible thing is to design a different system to handle the frustration. I wouldn't look at this so much as a labor saving systems as much as a sanity saving system A person that wants a plate or several plates simply walks to the tank, where the plates are stored, takes the oldest plates out and rinses them under a tap to make them ready for the dinner table. It is the opposite in relationship to dishwashing... You work when you need to with minimal effort, not when you're obliged to with maximum effort (handwashing is a chore). Also the time of work is placed in a time when work is already required of person. Setting the table, cooking, cutting veggies, etc. As opposed to when person wants to sit back and relax with friends and family, making the chore one of increased drag...

It makes a lot of sense, and I could imagine this working like a charm for an intentional community or 20 person household.

One comment, you say you want to also add foodscraps of sometimes large groups of people (hundreds?). If foodscraps are not eaten in ponds, they compost anaerobically, taking up oxygen in the process. This is a normal part of pond/water life and not a concern except when you want to have living fish... A bubbler is needed at such times. I can imagine that it would normally stay off, but if you expect that the foodscraps will not all be eaten by the fish, yout turn on the bubbler.

Anyone know if the OP is still around? Did the fishdishwasher work, or did they all succumb to some rare form of poisoning from the fish?

ah wait, was looking at the wrong dates, for some reason I keep looking at the date joined, not the posting date. Still wondering if it worked though

My dog will flat clean a plate with melted cheese etc. I dunno why you would mess with fish when almost everyone has a dog

Eric Hammond wrote:My dog will flat clean a plate with melted cheese etc. I dunno why you would mess with fish when almost everyone has a dog

I don't have a dog. Fish don't need to be messed with. They are just there. Fish don't bark or whine for attention. I've been using the little stream, not far from the cabin. Something eats the food scraps. There are no fish in the seasonal stream, but lots of bugs.

My dirty clothes are hung out in the rain on the branch stubs of a small cedar. I heat shower water on the dash of my truck. The world is my urinal. These passive systems work for me.

Foot and mouth disease travels fast unless heat disinfects the dishes. By yourself, just using water is ok, but in a group of people you gotta make the dishes are sanitized.

The dishes still receive a hot water bath. The fishwasher is a preliminary step. Dishes come out virtually clean, but are still given a wash. It only makes sense if you have the space, water and a desire to have fish, which I do.

I've never heard of foot and mouth around here. Hand, foot and mouth, not the bovine variety is something that often sweeps through daycare centers and other places where children share spit and snot. Direct contact is the usual vector. Shared suck toys, utensils and surfaces can spread it. A cold fish tank is not an ideal breeding ground. Fish are not susceptible to the viruses involved.
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If I were to do my dishes with only the water from a fish tank, I doubt that I would ever come to harm. I suppose I could pick up a tick on one of my walks to the stream. Or, I could slide down the slippery slope leading to the stream and be swept over the series of waterfalls and cascades, to the valley floor, some 300 feet away. I'm willing to take the risk. Did I mention that I have a series of waterfalls cascading past my cabin. Na - na na na - na na.😎

Dale Hodgins wrote:Another epiphany has struck me like a bolt of lightning. There has been much debate concerning types of soap and methods of washing dishes in this forum. Some like electric dishwashers. Others despise them. Some like soap. Some think that a bit of dish soap will surely kill the kids. --------- Luckily, I have arrived to lay all of this silliness to rest. This simple "invention" will soon render both the dishwasher and the kitchen sink obsolete. ----- You're welcome.

Don't rip your kitchen sink out just yet. I was kidding about that part. It will still be used for other things.
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Fish Tank Dishwasher ----- Some fish aren't at all particular about what they'll eat. They will nibble on pretty much anything that is tossed into their tank. These fish would happily eat most things that we do. As luck would have it, that's the sort of stuff that we call "dirt", on dirty dishes. These dishes aren't dirty. They are foodey.

My plan, and I do have one is to simply place dishes directly from the table to the tank. No scraping, no pre-wash, nothing. A variety of species and sizes of fish in the tank, should ensure that most food waste will be palatable to one of them. Catfish, carp, and tilapia would all seem like good candidates to recruit as dishwashers. I don't expect that they will totally clean, dry and put the dishes in the cupboard. This would be more of a pre wash, to get rid of grease and any food scrap larger than a grain of sand. After a day or so in the tank, the dishes should be put in the sink and washed with very little soap compared to what would have been used otherwise.

The Tank --- I'm thinking that a nice big tank could occupy the empty spot left behind when you ripped out the dishwasher. It's close to the sink. Now, children will argue over who gets to clear the table. It's fun to feed the fish. The work involved in cleaning dishes has now been greatly reduced. You are welcome !!! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm going to cook up something good and greasy very soon and I'll provide photographic documentation as to the effectiveness of this method by this time next week. My dishes are going into a pond that has a variety of resident critters.

The Japanese have used this system for years. I would highly recommend this! Especially if you have cycled water. the Carp's waste water makes excellent food for most aquaponic situations!

P.S. I dare you not to finish watching the video. I find it so entrancing that I usually watch the whole thing. this is Part II the Part I has lass info but more Culture! Plus the Title "Satoyama" Translation literally is Mountain village. and they use the water cycle to create an aquaponic village!