Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Thats a great idea! I can get 50 pound sacks of organic spelt for $35.

Has anyone tried breeding mealworms for their fish? I would assume they could only be a supplement food, but are supposed to be pretty easy to breed in an old fishtank with wood shavings and cheap oats.

There are a couple of threads relating to the raising of insects, worms and alternative foods……

Raising Insects For Food

Black Soldier Flies

Alternative Foods

Raising Mealworms ..... an article


Use the forum search function if you're looking for specific information....

It's probably been mentioned at least once or twice in the past....

Just remember to click the "Posts" button rather than the default "Threads" button.... it'll give you more meaningful results.

Today's 'New Inventors' on Ch.2 had a guy on it who invented a 'low cost' stock feed pellet machine and an infusor. Cost of $40k, but he reckons he gets barra food down to $600/tonne as opposed to > $1k.

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s2026017.htm

Cool. Looks like the food is meant to be fed to the livestock almost imediatelly, given that for fish food that machine sucks the moisture to the centre of the pellet, rather than drying the pellet. Good for a large operation, but no good for bagging and selling, so no good for us.

good if you were feeding a tonne a day or two....

For sure. How much do you plan to be feeding when up and going Stu?

Distillers solids are great! Only the starches are removed it is actually a nearly perfect food for any live stock. Its mostly protein. Just add some kelp for trace minerals and some soy meal. ADM has tested it using a 20% soy meal mix and 80& distillers solids and the fish out grew all the control group being fed commercial pellets.

anyone got any plans for home made pelletizers?

I have often though about using a modified log splitter or the hydraulic pump from a car hooked to a cylinder. ..And a paper clip..

A steel pipe, a plate with holes and a plunger..

yeh, but what sort of "plate" ?

i still gotta muck around with my sausage maked come fish food maker. what i need to do is remove the blade BEFORE the plate with the holes in it and midify the thread so i can screw in to the outside. so then the extruded lengths get cut after they come out.

How about a pasta maker on the spaghetti setting?

The extruded bits dont need cutting they just break by them selves

I'm going to try and put my ingredients through a meat grinder thingy like they do on this Indonesian website and then dry it. If that doesn't work, I'll put it through a kitchen blender first. Still have to get a manual meat grinder and a kitchen blender, though. And fish to feed.



Is the picture on the right also what you mean with your "sausage maker come fish food maker", Steve?

How about one of the cheap newspaper briquette makers? Put a solid plate under the top holed plate then just push the handles down.