Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Who do you have wanting to buy the tilapia? Are they happy to buy whole fish on ice? Or do you have a processor to handle small quantities of fish?

We don't sell very much catfish but we prefer eating the catfish ourselves (and cleaning just one or two fish to feed the whole family is easier than cleaning a mess of small tilapia.) As for selling fish to local neighbors, we actually have quite a lot of people who would like to buy bluegill but we usually don't have that many bluegill (getting the fingerlings is harder as they are not available year round like the catfish) and it definitely takes a whole mess of them to feed a family.

I have secured a few local places and a few individuals that should but whatever I can produce. Since it's just the Mrs. & I and the kids have all flown the nest, I only need 1-2 fish for a dinner.

I'd really love to try redfish, but can't get ahold of the FWC to find out about getting some from their hatchery. That would be some fine eating!

Anyone growing anything else but tilapia and catfish in the deep south? Can we find jade perch in the US?

BCotton has raised blue gill and I think crappie. I don't know about jade perch??

The entire east coast got hammered over the weekend. We got this. Frost on the porch roof and broccoli.

A few weeks later..record heat again. water temps up to 74 with no heat. new motor works, but something in circuit board is preventing the pump from getting power. No fuel to burn chamber- no heat. Bummer.

Nitrate were at zero due to cutting way back on feed. last few days, I've increased feed as temps warm and fish are eating more. Nitrates are up to around .5, with ammonia over .25. First ammonia I've seen in months. I'm assuming cool temps dropped the bacteria levels and I will need to monitor for a few days until they catch up with the ammonia.

I have the pig pasture getting close and the new "egg mobile" ready also. These will go out on the pig pasture and rotate daily to improve soil. Have to catch a rat that ate my broccoli.

WOW, you seem to be in an interesting pocket of a micro climate, I have never seen broccoli look so soggy after a freeze. (Of course the last place I experienced a hard freeze on my broccoli was at the old house in the soil garden and we ran the sprinklers just before dawn. Broccoli seemed to like waking up with ice on it and that may have protected it from the worst of the cold.)

frost in Florida? Next the sky will fall

LOL, sky fell years ago when the citrus industry had to move south after all the cold in the 1980's.
Actually, the two years after I started doing aquaponics we had some severe winters here where we would have a couple straight weeks of cold with a couple of hard freeze nights in a row in the middle of it. Even under plastic everything was cold. It was after two winters of that when I decided there was no point in growing tilapia in central Florida because it got too cold for them and keeping them warm in an outdoor aquaponics system was just too silly. RAS or decoupled might be another matter when you are not recirculating the water back to the fish after the Plant side of things.

Beautiful sunny here but chilly today, how is it down your way Chris?

I was in Boca visiting my daughter. Cold down there too. We were in the low 30's here. I've been at this location for 28 years and have have seen some pretty cold weather. The worst was 2008 where we had almost 15 hours below freezing. I was running sprinklers in the nursery and we had almost 18" of ice because it stayed cold for so long. Broke a lot of limbs/branches due to the weight. Low plants came through unscathed.

We're in a cold pocket, typically run 8-9 degrees cooler than Tampa and closer to Brooksville, which is almost an hour North.

Water in FH is staying in the mid 60's, and they're still eating. So pretty happy with that. The outside pond is going to get cover ed with a poly cover like a greenhouse, and that should keep it nice and toasty. If we get extended clouds, a rarity, I would run one of the three pumps I have on site and warm the water with the 71 degree ground water.

Harvested some nice Romaine to take down to Boca and have a bunch of kale, peas, and onions coming on.

This is what my newly planted pasture looks like after about 8 hours of pigs.lol
I'm hoping to get 12-14 days out of each paddock and then replant and re-seed as needed. I din'tr plan on a few hours of grading also. Like mini excavators.
Will be using RAS water pumped into pasture to add additional fertilizer and rabbit tractor and egg mobile to help area as well. If you haven't read or see Joel Salatin's Polyface, it's a great concept and model for the future of food production.

Wow the sure destroy a pasture. How many pigs were in that pasture?

Yeah, they do. I have three berkshires in there now. They range from around 500 lbs(boar) to 300(sow) to around 200(gilt). I am hoping to have around 12 in the area, but it looks like I will need to change plans to have enough for them to eat. I'm trying to rotate them at least 60 days to give time to regrow other crops, but seeing what they did in 24 hours with only 3 pigs, that's not going to work. I do have a local brewery starting up, and they have promised their spent grain, high protein, organic supplement. It's so high protein that you're only supposed to feed 10-15% of diet. But, I can compost or spread the rest and supplement my new hens in my egg mobile as well. Trying to reduce feed bill, give them a more "piggie life", and keep the value higher. It's certainly takes more effort. Hopefully, it will be worth it. There are some locals selling Heritage Pork for $4.50-5.00 a pound.(hung weight). Local, organic, pasture raised. Now, all I need to do is figure out how to grow crops to pasture them on in 30 days. Then I could rotate them every 4-5 days. Not possible??

The one bright spot, I have reduced my feeding almost 30%. At the expense of my nice new rye and grain rye.

Turnips, mangles, rutabaga etc, those you can grow as fodder in closer to 30 days during the cooler season

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Going to try some turnips and beets, along with some different varieties of field peas. Thanks TC.