Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello, I'm brand new to this forum but have an extensive background in sustainable agriculture & hydroponics and this is the next logical step in my hobby/profession/passion.

I live in Northern California, specifically Sonoma County. We have very moderate temperatures year round. .The lowest the temps ever get is about 30 degrees F (-1.1 C for you blokes) to 90 degrees F (32 C). Most of the year the temps are very normal; right around 76 degrees f (24 C).

I'm looking for a delicious, easy to maintain, vegetarian fish that is self-spawning. I'm aware of channel catfish and their idealism for my climate/legality. I'm honestly not too worried about Fish & Game, as my system is for myself, family & friends. I'm not trying to profit off of this endeavor, just have good eats

So, please, suggest something to me please. I will do as much footwork and research on the specie/s once I know what will work. Thus far, searching this site and other internet sources, I've had a lot of trouble.

Tilapia ....

Tilapia can be somewhat vegetarian though when they are young they have a major protein hunger so should be fed a high protein feed to keep them from eating their smaller sibblings.

However for tilapia, you need warm water if you want them to grow year round and that might not be as sustainable to achieve. Just to keep them alive and healty you need to be able to keep the water above about 55 F but they won't be eating or growing in that cold of water.

I'll leave you to sort out the legality of it.

I'm not thinking of any cooler water vegetarian fish at the moment. Somehow I don't think you want to eat grass carp.

I'm sure there are other fish than catfish you could raise in your system but I don't know how easy they are to feed or breed. I've only heard of a few people trying blue gill or sun fish.

Welcome aboard! I'm in Sonoma valley and have tilapia. So far so good, but temperature is problematic. If you are near the coast (Bodega Bay) it might be easier to raise trout. They're vegetarian, right? *grin*

I 2nd tilapia, but being a breeder I am biased. O. aurea is the most cold tolerant of the easily obtainable tilapia species. I can be caught wild in Central & Southern California, although improved domestic varieties do better in a cultured environment. for any sort of growth the water must be kept in the mid 70's F. They die when water temps get into the low 40's. Most other species die in the high 50's F.

A greenhouse with thermal storage could do it for you.

You only need to geed the babies larval feed for about 2 week at 80F. After that they can live on Duckweed and Algae just fine. All algae is not the same though, so you need to be sure you have the type they can get enough protein from. Most of the fibrous types work OK. They can filter green water, but it is hard to keep the culture pure unless you go high tech. I have a 20 gallon brackish tank that has 5 tilapia in it. I have not fed it in over 3 months. There is a self sustaining green water culture that they feed on. They are not growing very fast, but they are not skinny either.

Amazing fish.

Hey guys, thanks a lot!



I can easily build a greenhouse, which might actually be good for cold season crops as well.

I'm in Cotati, so it does freeze, its not quite like the coast. I've thought of trout, but I want to raise something that is simple and self-spawning. I've learned, while doing a lot of different systems, to keep it very simple to begin with and scale your projects, building off of the previous ideas and technologies.

Really, I'm just bored with sustainable ag and hydroponics, I want something more complex and challenging.

The tilapia sounds very promising.

I have about $6000 that I plan on spending on the entire system. A good portion of which will either be solar or wind power. I still haven't evaluated my wind potential... which is my preference as it works well all year long. Since the power will be 100% sustainable, I don't mind running water heaters... assuming the heater doesn't draw to much juice.

I've worked up some calculation sheets on mathcad that do heat loss calculations for various sized and insulated containers and would be happy to run over some plans with you. Not guaranteeing exact accuracy, but should be within a factor of 2 for sure. I'm running a 200w heater in my 900gal system (mostly covered and insulated) and am holding at 58degF. Hope it goes higher when a valley oak loses it's leaves.

I am also interested in this issue, thanks for bringing it up.

Tilapia are not "legal" here as I understand.

There is a school near me that does get a waiver from the fish and game but they buy in large fish to begin with and they have them only for a short time.

How about trout? Sink the tank in the ground, should stay in the 55 range.. there is a trout farm in Half Moon Bay according to the local fish market.

Koi are also an option, sell them and make enough money to eat wild salmon

peter

ps happy holidays

I really like the idea of trout at the coast as you can keep the temps down low enough for them even in summer. Main issue is where to get fingerlings to raise: DFG regs again. *sigh*. Maybe the local producer might pass some off to you.

If you find a reasonably-priced legal way to deal with regs, please let us all know! Then again, $75 for the permit is not really all that bad after all the expenses one incurs with AP, but (as I recall) they want that fee each time you get more fish. Fine for a commercial enterprise, but not for personal use.

Koi do sound promising (and I've thought of that myself), but they pretty much shut down growth at 50degF. Also, apparently the optimum temperature for KHV (would you believe Koi herpes!?) is 15–25 6C. So, if you can keep above that range you may as well grow tilapia. Not that you would ever be faced with KHV. http://vir.sgmjournals.org/cgi/reprint/84/10/2661.pdf

Hi fellow Californians,

I've talked and corresponded with DFG lately and my understanding is that for personal use (aka "private stocking"), O. mossambicus and O. hornorum tilapia are OK for us to raise in a closed system. They are not on the DFG's restricted species list and are not, like the 3 other tilapia species listed there, limited to south of the Tehachapi Mountains.

Technically, getting some would require 1 or 2 permits: a stocking permit, and if acquiring from an out-of-state supplier, an importation permit. Each permit is $50 more or less. See http://www.dfg.ca.gov/fish/Administration/Permits/

Raising fish to sell is a whole other ballgame: regulated not as private stocking, but as commercial aquaculture, and there's a $700 annual permit for that to start with...

Welcome aboard, Paul.

Interesting info. Too bad that the most desirable varieties (like Rocky Mountain White) are crosses of the forbidden species.

Given our typical dewpoint of 55degF in the summer and the fact that my system never exceeded 76degF last summer I think rainbow trout may be a good choice. Possibly, with a little effort (fans etc on hot days & large, shaded fishtanks), we may be able to keep them year round with less energy use and effort than we would need for tilapia. On the other hand, you are in a hotter area, so it may not work there.

So, we just need to find a legal fish that thrives and eats well and grows from 40degF to 85degF! Too bad tilapia die below 50. Perhaps a breeding program for low temperature tolerance? If they would simply survive the winter in good health I would be delighted.

At 3500 ft. elevation in northern Arizona my temps are more extreme, so I have stocked bluegill. Tailapia would not make it thru the winter, nor trout throut thru the summer. Even in the greenhouse, with 600 gal of thermal mass and another 1200 gal in system water, trout wouldnt make it. Plus Arizona will not allow talapia.
Bluegill do well even in the outdoor pond which will ice over. They are slow growing and need about two years to get to plate size, but are tasty. I feed them catfish pellets. They are not strictly vegitarian. They love bugs and may feed entirely off buglight deposits in the pond. They are a tough fish and can survive low oxygen a wide range of PH. They will reproduce in tanks and ponds but not untill older.

I do believe you can build a fairly large greenhouse and an aquaphonics systen and power it with solar and wind for $6000. I did so but used recycled materials and hired little labor. With my 12x 30 ft greenhosue and 550 gl FT I have a 400 watt wind genny and 450 watts of solar. Barely enough to run three pumps 24/7 much less provide heat. If planning to use solar hot water collectors........DO NOT USE COPPER. It will poison the fish.

While tilapia are easy fish, They definitely don't grow fast unless you can keep the water quite warm and feed them high quality feed. If you want to leave the temperature cooler and feed them as vegetarians, you can probably expect them to take about the same as blue gill to grow out. However, if you leave them access to the bottom of the tank and no supervision or population control, it is possible that you will end up with thousands of little fish that are so over crowded that you rarely get plate size fish.

To avoid excessive tilapia recruitment, stock a predatory fish that will not outgrow the adult tilapia before you have a chance to harvest. Yellow Perch, Largemouth Bass, Catfish, Hybrid Striped Bass, White Bass, small pickerels, Bluegill and others would work quite well. If stocked in the correct ratio, you will have minimal tilapia recruitment and an extra "bonus" variety of fish for the table.

The low temp tolerance is actually a boon not a bane. Were tilapia able to over winter more States here would ban the species.