Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I think we all go back and forth a little on the knowledge vs experience thing. There's a happy medium in there somewhere and there's value in both.

I'm in support of education and knowledge banks, in fact I've purchased, studied, learned from many books, the internet as well as practical experience, it's a combination.

It's all about restructuring those resources to fit your needs, or pocket.

Education should not be an exclusive club for the elite only!

In my case I've invested all of my resources and committed my life to make changes in what I believe it need to be improved or better managed..... we are on front line to promote a brighter future in the food management system.

If there is anything Ive learn over the years is that its already been done a million times over and its already been done decades ago so the info is there its just that you need to sort it and locate it to your specific needs.

Charlie, in most areas I would agree...but not to sure in AP. It's too new, and there are so many variables. That's why people like Ryan are doing research on specific nutrient quotients for specific plants; because the answers aren't out there. I could be wrong, I certainly don't have any in depth knowledge or longstanding hands on experience(the best teacher). But, when I see people like Ryan doing research, I feel confident to say that there is still a lot we don't know.

But Ryan certainly isn't sharing his research. It's proprietary information. So it's great that Ryan is doing that work, but he's the only one going to benefit.

Not trying to talk ill of Ryan. He's running a business.

Right, but the information isn't available for him to utilize currently either. If he could look it up, he would surely do research on something else. Pretty sure he's got a lot of things to do, and not a lot of free time. My point was just that this industry doesn't have the time invested, like dirt farming to really have all the answers. In my nursery, if I have a problem, I can call the University of Florida ag dept and they will get me answers. If I ask them about AP questions, they refer me to a 1 page pamphlet about AP. They do have testing facilities where I could send tissue sample, etc, but since they don't have a baseline, like in soil farming/horticulture, they can't help much. There is a lot of good info out there. I have seen and used quite a bit, but there remains a lot of additional research and data left to be discovered. I haven't really delved into the V.I. papers and Lennards & Rakocy's work, but I'm pretty sure they are still actively researching. In 10 years, this will be a totally different beast. IMO

Rackocy I think it's retired but still sporadically representing this industry in talks and conferences and he has done extensive work on the subject.
Lennards still in the industry but just like any real professionist has a fees to match so unless you sign up a contract no real info given.
30 years of AP industry has revealed the potential and the downfall.....IMO it is all still to be explored.

This may be true but extensive study of other peoples experience contained in books combined with you own application of that study is better than patsying along in your own incompetance until you either:

1. wise up and go and learn from the mistakes of others (easy path); or
2. eventually gain enough experience and competence to make it work (harder path).

The easiest and cheapest path is study fist and then apply but many of us frequently take option 1 and occaisionally option 2. You can succeed without study but you will save yourself oddles of time and money with study. Even if it is only to look at what others have done that has not worked so you don't repeat the same mistakes. Which is why we try to encourage people to post their disasters as well as their successes on the forum.

Having said that there are examples where people have succeeded in developing certain techniques/inventions because they didn't know any better.



More than you would obviously think. The second agricultural revolution came about from the dissemination of improved agricultural techniques. That dissemination included in a very large part the writing of a number of texts and then their translation into a large number of languages for use around the world. It wasn't books alone that did this. For example the agronomists that went to India trained numerous people to not only be better farmers but teachers of farmers and they did this with practical and theoretical teaching.

Also just because a technique is ancient doesn't mean it is any good. For example the SRI technique of growing rice has shown that for thousands of years rice farmers have been growing rice with a set of techniques that led to reduced production. It took a Madagascan priest/agronomist to write the SRI method down in a book before it was widely disseminated in Madagascar let alone around the world.




Education is never going to be free until teachers and all the other people required to provide the education system (from builders to cleaners of schools) decide to volunteer their labour to make it possible.

Someone has to pay. The argument over whether we as citizens should decide to authorise our government to levy taxes in order to subsidise in whole or in part peoples education is another matter entirely.

Proprietary knowledge has to have some exclusive value to people who develop it or they won't bother. The patent system was designed with the dual purpose of ensuring people had that exclusive right to use the knowledge they developed but that in time it would also become freely available.

Lets also remember the topic on hand - Text Books for commercial AP education. If you want to start up a commercial endeavor, a $135 book is peanuts. Yes, university texts are expensive.

AP is actually very old and dates back to the Aztecs and their chinampas, its just that the aquaponics you know today has been re-developed/designed. Backyard aquaponics is reletively new but all the methodologies are the same.

RAS is old, farming is old, waste water treatment is old, hydroponics is old, all these things have been around for a long time and all the science is there. AP is just a combination of these things. The work of losordo, Dr. James Rakocy and the UVI, Dr. Wilson Lennard, Ebling, Steve Diver, Savidov, Dezsery and the Speraneos (just to name a few) all have published imformation out there in relation to all these parts of the pie.

The base of commercial systems has been done and documented but still onging work to be proven as a success against conventional farming. These days it seems it is just being fine tuned. Much the same way any other industry does... and will continue to do.

I think text book learning is very valuable. You just can't have all the ideas yourself that you need to have to run a successful operation without prior knowledge.
Even in aquaponics there is an enormous amount of knowledge learned from others that have originally come out of scientific studies.
Also the experience and trials and errors of others are valuable and it is just too much effort for a single person to replicate the results of others for every single parameter and rule of operation. A person on their own just cannot achieve that.

Has anyone had any positive/negative experiences with this text?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/140518 ... rd_i=typ01

Going to try and locate a copy through the inter-library loan service but was wondering if anyone has read it yet.

Couple of books which are now dated but still worth having
Greenhouses edited by Dr Kieth Garzoli (Australian Government Publishing Service)
Commercial Hydroponics John Mason (Kangaroo Press)

AND

Basic Physics 1 SL Martin and AK Connor (Whitcombe and Tombs Pty LTD)

I am not joking about the last one.