Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I have a friend that is big into decorative fish breeding, and we've planned (wishful thinking mostly) a fish hatchery/greenhouse for many years now. I am in business school, and I'd like to refine the ideas and put together a business plan for school mostly. I have plenty of designs and mock-ups on paper, but I'd eventually like to have a solid presentation with projections and numbers to back it up. I want this to be my final project essentially. I was hoping to gain any insights about what the limitations would be to using tropical fish. There's a couple companies here in Utah that raise tropical fish using water from local hot springs. They are water is going straight to waiste, so maybe if I put together a solid plan I could approach them with it in the future.

1. If they have hot springs, they can afford to run to waste, just like fish farms on the river can.
2. AP will only work for fresh water tropical, so limiting.
3. Many tropical fish will survive at 30°C so with the right greenhouse, you could maintain this without much loss. The difficulty is in getting natural light and sufficient insulation. Double glazed greenhouse I'd think.
4. Tropical fish are a little touchy IMHO, so you may have issues with them not liking certain plants.

If the AP is just to keep the fish alive, and the veggies for personal consumption, and the heating can be done affordably, then it will work. Will it be cost effective? I don't know.
You'd want to sell this to somebody wanting to breed said fish who has limited access to hot water, or preferably, water of any temp.

Thanks for the advice, one problem I can see also is if I just used waste water from an established hatchery there wouldn't be enough time for the bacteria to break down the waist into usable nitrates, and if it's straight to waist on their end, a recirculating AP system couldn't keep up with the influx. The tropical fish my friend breeds are predominately freshwater African cichlids, but he has bred south american varieties. I think the south american varieties like too much acidity for them to be suitable for AP.

I am very interested in seeing where this leads. I personally am seriously considering tropical fish for a commercial venture. IMHO tropical fish would be the only way to make the fish side of aquaponics lucrative. The sell price is per fish, the size is dramatically smaller than 1lbs that is usually the grow out size, so higher number of fish can be kept than for say trout and other feed fish.
I have been looking into importing tropical fish. That way you dont have to worry so much about breeding them yourself. Then turning around and selling them to petshops without worring about growing them to market size. You could be restocking every couple of weeks. I really think this could work out.

I think this is a great idea too. I have Koi in my system right now but have thought of tropicals as well.
Keep us posted.

Todd

I read an article about a guy not far from us who tuned his Barra growing system into a tropical ornamental growing venture, he was doing really well evidently.