Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

i work in the butcher industry and have access to "sawdust" the meat and bone dust off the bandsaw. One of my butchers freezes it into cubes and uses it as burley. how would it go as fish food. what fish would like it? would it need other stuff to supplement it?

ooo, I can see that being used when making food for barra...

I reckon yabbies would love it big time

That would be a good choice of aquatic life to 'farm'... they taste GREAT!

Can see the yabbies liking it as it will be high in calcium from the bone. Not sure how much bone dust is "good" for the fish, wouldn't want it to block their gut. But i really don't know. You're in the right line of work beeso, many home made foods use beef heart and liver. I kow the tandanus (catfish) that i'm ordering are carnivores, and like a bit of chopped liver

IMHO ..

If I had acess to that lovely stuff!

This is what I would do!

I would ..drop it in the worm farm .... they would love it ...

Then feed the worms to the fish ...

Pure Protein to the fish .. rotted composted sawdust to the garden as compost!

Should i see my butcher to get some of this blood, Bone, meat, sawdust mix for free? I reckin I could take 10 kg per week to improve my garden via compost and feed my fish.

Thats why i love ths forum, 100 brains looking at the same problem from different views!

Would the meat go ok in the worm farm johnnie? At the very least you would have to make sure it was well buried under some bedding?

a well balanced worm farm would make short work of that stuff... when my worm farm runs at optimum levels it "chomps" up everything in super fast time! It wont have time to become a health hazzard - those worms will eat anything organic (with the exception of onion garlic and citrus that is )

Yeah, I was listening to a program on the radio the other day, and they were talking about composting worms, and she said a big yes to meat scraps even human and pet hair in you worm farms. I reckon you have hit it on the knocker Johnnie- a great idea.

That settles it then.

Mental note, corner local butcher and obtain supply of band saw dust......Great contribution beeso!

There could be some funny looks from the local butcher "you want what???"

But as aquaponists, I am sure we are all used to people thinking we are mildly nuts!!

I agree with the advice that suggests that meat residues (including bone dust) should be put through a worm farm rather than putting it straight into a fish tank.

The likely outcome of putting meat residues into a worm farm is that you'll end up with maggots.

Normally, worm farmers get all anxious about maggots but my advice would be to harvest the maggots and put them into some bran or pollard for a couple of days (to allow them to clean themselves) and then to feed them to the fish. They are likely to be better received than the worms anyway.

By my calculations you'll be very popular with cats, dogs, and in Aussie, possibly crocs.

I think this is a marvellous source of food!

But needs more thought.

The fresh smell will drive carnivores nuts.
The half baked smell will drive wives and neighbours nuts.

I highly recommend dog proof fencing if you plan to farm worms with this. Maybe you guys don't have feral animal problems.

In the US in parts - BEARS!!!

I was just thinking the same thing Aquaddict. Maybe the worms eat fast, but do they eat fast enough to stay ahead of the smell? Perhaps a small amount at a time.

buring in a few inches into the worm dirt helps the smells and the worms are more comfortable working at it too