Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Yes many people. Its a very widely understood phenomenon. There is even a section in Timmon's book "Recirculating Aquaculture"


Actually its not. Copying RAS at best gives you an expensive and inefficient system design. While you can build a complete RAS system and integrate it with a HP system but why would you?

Copying is not the answer, understanding the technology and methodology is part of the answer. Its only by understanding how RAS systems work that you can adapt the technology to AP. So many so called commercial systems don't understand enough of the basics of AQ, HP and business and so their systems are so often doomed to fail before they are even commissioned.

One of the reasons that there are so many failed commercial AP systems is precisely because they have just copied RAS technology without understanding it. Similarly there are systems out there that have failed because they didn't use enough RAS technology again because they didn't understand how or why the needed it. Similarly there are many systems builders that didn't understand the basics of how to run a business or assess their investment.

One of the reasons I've avoided a small scale system for so long was because I didn't have a path across that chasm. Now I've got an advantage because of my previous experience in business and my education, I new that chasm existed before I started building a system but I learned about it because I listened to people who had more experience.

You are always going to struggle Damian until you accept that you don't know what you don't know. You say that you are focusing on "other design factors" well you can't afford to do that IF you are going to lead the development of a commercial operation you have to be either across everything or delegate the bits that you are not focusing on to someone who will.

You have been on this forum for years now, you obviously have persistence but I struggle to fathom why you wouldn't drop a hundred dollars on a text book. Given that you don't have a grasp of these things yet maybe you should consider doing the Cornell short course online. Maybe invest in going to a course run by Ryan, that is more money than you might feel you have but you HAVE been spending money on building AP systems maybe you should not spend any more money on building systems but instead in some education that will serve you much better in the long run.

Failing to spend your own money, as I've suggested before, start harassing the libraries in your area about getting a copy on inter library loan or even purchasing a copy. Surely there is a school or university that has a budget for books and you could get them to purchase a copy.

I have read "Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers" witch is a very good book now i have come across “The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms To Fail.” which seems to be close to what i am looking for at the moment.

Stuart to me Aquaponics is not a combination of aquaculture and hydroponics if that was the case why even call it aquaponics why not just call it aquaculture and hydroponics combined. Aquaponics is closer to permaculture than it is to either aquaculture or hydroponics and for this reason we should study the problems specifically faced by aquaponics.

Because i don't have a book does not nullify my thought process or problem solving abilities. I am a farmer it is what i do.

Aquaponics is known by many professionals precisely as a combination of Aquaculture and hydropoincs other wise known as "Integrated agriculture of Aquaculture and Hydroponics." Many professionals often don't refer to "aquaponics" at all. Blue Smart Farms being the best example.


No it doesn't that is true but its not just about one book. I see your unwillingness to invest in your education as part of a greater symptom. There are such valuable lessons that can be drawn from RAS but if you don't understand RAS technology you don't know what to use or what not to use.

I'd also recommend a lot of other books but if I have to recommend just one book its Timmons. If there was a similar comprehensive starter on hydro that I knew I'd recommend that but what you can get from one book for aquaculture is spread across a range for hydro. I've got books that are worth reading because of one chapter I've got others that were worth buying and reading for one sentence. I just cant fathom how someone could be interested in farming fish and not read books or do courses on how other people do it.

I have never recommended texts on extensive aquaculture to you but there are valuable things to know about green water aquaculture , for example, that are worth learning even though they are not applicable to AP.

You are regularly on here asking for help but many of the questions you ask indicate that you haven't covered so many of the basics.

The aquaculture principals still need to be followed, and they are ones that have been worked out, and given much trial and error.

Fish need oxygen to survive, the aquaculture books tell how to work out how much.

The ammonia needs to be converted through nitrification, the amount of media you need for X amount of fish is all worked out through AQ.

You need certain levels of feed for growth, it's all worked out through AQ.

You need a certain amount of water turnover, again it's all been worked out through AQ. And then there is optimum pipe size, pump size, head height, etc.

They might be slightly different, but the same principals still apply.

In a home system, you can get away with more, because you aren't trying to make money off it, but if you're trying to make money off it, you want to get the most from your investment. And if you haven't worked out the oxygen requirements for trout, you could have a full load, and then all the fish will die because you didn't work out the maths that have already been worked out in AQ.

AP, AQ, HP are all names, work out what you want, and then work the system to what you need.

Exactly the point of this thread, to plan how to cross the chasm from large supplemental systems to commercial systems not interested in actual system design here.



Finally some common ground for us on this topic, that even some professionals dont think that current so called aquapoinc design is nothing more than a combo of AQ and HP. I think Aquaponics gives us the opportunity for a single farmer to make a descent living from produce sales using only his labor in the modern environment. That is with a relatively small landmass and no tractors engines or plows. Just to expand the idea I basically believe humans should of skiped industrial agriculture and developed Aquaponics instead.




If you put it that way I do think the internet has replaced formal education and that open source, crowd sourcing solutions are the way forward. I wanna live like the Nox (star gate reference)

I think you missed everything else I said. They are names, but the basics still apply to all of them, the same principals still apply to all of them. You need certain things to make the systems work, and they need to be understood. Otherwise you'll very possibly crash and burn.




The nox already had a massive tech base behind them. Don't think they didn't go through an industrial phase before they started going invisible/living with nature.

But the problem with open source, crowd sourcing solutions is that they are only as good as the person on the other end of the computer, and most of the time they aren't professionals. It's opinions unbacked by any sort of formal testing, which is very true of any forum. Chinese whispers develop and thrive on any forum.

Let's not stray from the topic. No need to discuss RAS principals and aquaponic system design. I was mearly highlighting that designing aquaponic systems must take other factors into concideration. Let just look at the problems encountered when going from BYAP to commercial. One major if not the biggest change will be going from voluntary labor to paying your self this may mean mono cropping and loseing the ability to feed the family home grown food. All said and done you will now be stucked with labour cost.. I think $300us/week should be a good min to start with.

So you will have to make at least that amount profit

The biggest problem with going commercial is selling your stock. It might be different in Barbados, but in Australia, the supermarkets buy the majority of stuff direct from big suppliers, and then try to screw them over to get stuff cheaper.

The only real option for smaller commercial places is to sell them at the markets, which is dependant on way to many factors for my liking, and you need a large amount of anything to make a profit, and you'll end up with wastage, and so on. It'll be struggle town, and you can't easily expand through struggle town.

So the first thing I'd do if going commercial is to figure out what I'm going to grow, how much I can realistically sell it for, what the demand is, and make contact with local fruit and veg shops to find people willing to buy it.

After it's all set up, the growing is the easy part.

Hello Damian

Not commercial at all; but using Stuart and Column to test idea's is a bit naughty.

If that is the case I am using you to Sleepe. Lol. Any thing to add to the convo? In my neck of the woods they are very few people who are capable of having this conversion. I have learnt a lot all ready. And I hope there is more to come.

Column for a while I started to sell to the market sellers. Is that an option for you? But now I am interested in pre-packaged seasonings. Wouldent it be better if we could produce cheaper that everyone else? And why don't we focus on fish more? My maths says I should make most my money from fish and the plant side is just gravy.

This is a next point I disagree with most on and that is automation of the fish side. I think we shouldn't even see our fish till harvest. In a commercial system I would think less emphasis is on looking at fish. Kinda like how its done in chicken just design a system that rolls out fish per week and you can concentrate on growing your plants.

Your market may be different from everyone else's but AP can produce so many more plants than fish that you have to decide to make more money from fish than plants in order for that to happen. Around here I could make the plants make less money by growing grass to feed to livestock.


This just illustrates that you don't know much about raising fish or chickens for that matter. Monitoring your livestock is one of the most important things a farmer can do. A good farmer can look at their livestock and instantly know something is wrong. They might not know what is wrong and may need to run tests, do further examinations, call in the vet or the like but the ability to detect that there is a problem is one of the most important skills of farming. Basically because the earlier you can act on a problem to fix it the better.

That old adage the best fertiliser is the farmers shadow applies to livestock as well.

maybe you saw this post Damian.... viewtopic.php?f=1&t=25795

posted by scotty435

If the fish side is fully automated than the labor cost is minimal to the profit on fish Sturt automated does not mean that the fish are not monitered, just not in a traditional since. I am assuming you can get a contract and the price will be more stable on the fish side. So from a businesses perspective covering your wages with fish sales makes more sense to me. In my experience you lose plant crops way easier than fish. Plants need a lot more relative labor and sale price fluctuations are more making depending on plant sales the least favorable.

Are there other reasons you rather go with the plant side as the main money earner?

Thanks for the link Dlf-perth I will read later tonight.

In what sense then?


You can get a contract on anything yes you could on the fish but why couldn't you for the plants. In my experience most supply contracts need massive scale to be entertained and tend to favour large supermarket chains. Basically they seem to be a deal where the farmer gets promised a price and if the market goes above that price they don't get paid more but if the market price goes below that price suddenly the contract needs to be renegotiated.


If you are losing a crop whether fish or plants you are doing something seriously wrong. It may be something wrong with your design or maybe you are just better at looking after fish than plants.


It would depend on your plant crop and your market. In my market plant prices do fluctuate more but the seasonal variation is predictable and in adverse growing conditions they tend to go up from a base.


They just make more money.

From an environmental point of view I see AP competing directly with HP and to a lesser extent AQ. The environmental foot print of an HP lettuce or tomato is pretty massive whereas an AP produced plant has a much smaller environmental foot print.

Farmers lose crops. It just happens sometimes, you just make sure to recover financially. If your product is more cost efective you will find a buyer and contracts are about reliability not size, good people stick to contract once it doesn't kill them. That's just the way it is.

Automating the fish side is not impossible, but best done after you work out how much fish you will be producing.

Which brings me to the next step. How do you size the upgrade of the system? Seems like the guy that planned ahead and built the backyard system in such a way that expanding was easy would be better of. But most may have to completely rebuild. Lots of options for your start point for sizeing.

1 plant output.
2 fish output.
3 cost of system and running cost.
4 available land.
5 available labor.

Looking at it 5 is the first choice. Then see how this measure up next to the other 4 limiting factors. Maybe I have overlooked other options.