Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Recently we were approached by a gentleman by the name of Richard Chiang. He was working with Mr John Brummell from Canberra in helping him to promote the use of aquaponics and he wanted to analyse the cost benefits of aquaponics. Richard came to one of our workshops a few months ago, then went away and studied more about aquaponics, asked lots of questions, and wrote the following paper titled "Cost benefit analysis of aquaponic systems".

The paper is based around our BYAP systems and the pay off period for fully supplied and installed systems. It was great to read through Richards paper, I had worked some figures out myself a while back and created a power point presentation showing that you could pay for one of our DIY system in under two years. However, here’s an independent third party showing that all of our fully installed systems will pay for themselves within 2 - 2.5 years.

Of course this means that peoples DIY made up systems are even better off in terms of paying off their investment.

You can download the 11 page document here:
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/Travi ... ystems.pdf

Richard is a retired public servant who has worked for more than 30 years with the Malaysian and Western Australian Government, and holds the following qualifications:

Bachelor of Surveying (Honours), University of Queensland
Postgraduate Diploma in Computer Science, University of Queensland
Postgraduate Diploma in Applied Finance & Investment, Securities Institute of Australia
Certificate in Financials Advising Essentials, Securities Institute of Australia

Excepting in the long run it costs as much as one of your systems due to the failures, rebuilds, poor design, fish deaths, wasted veggies and screwups.
I'd say mine will take 3 years to pay off now that I've got it producing.

It's great that you have independant research to prove it though. I have just the mate to show that to He's always said it was more 'fun hobby' than 'money saver'

Fantastic - thanks Joel

hehe , Ive almost paid mine off Joel !

Wonderful read, EB! Thanks.

This is a fantastic read and I'm glad I now went with the BYAP system. It does cost more than a DIY but i now know it is viable and has save me the stress of a DIY.

Now I can safely add the extension

Thanks Joel, that was a good read and I'm sure you'll make good use of it.
These figures were based on a mature system and with an owner who could work/balance a fully stocked system. Do you recommend to new owners to only half stock the system in the first year so that they can get the hang of it slowly rather than max out the system? My suggestion might be to go slowly in the first year, but in this case you might add an extra year before you got your money back.

thanks for presenting the information. It was interesting to read and invaluable to show other people who know nothing about aquaponics.

Wasn't it Lucas running a thread on that some time back?

Very interesting! Makes one want to work harder to get their system up and running!