Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I dont usually read treehugger , but I found it buried all the way up the list of my old bookmarks ,

check this article out :

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/02 ... g-beer.php

Sounds promising. Only question is what about the whole range of nutrients fish (and we) need? Recent articles on nutritional value of farmed tilapia and catfish are a bit of warning, but I'm confident that they can come up with something that works well as they have done with chicken feed. Cross fingers...

Spent brewer's grain has been used a long time and works well, especially when combined with yeast. It is best pelletized as loose grain and yeast fouls up the works. The article on tilapia nutrition was totally debunked. The guy has something he was sellling and needed to slam tilapia. Tilapia has fewer omega 3 than cod, but way more than beef or chicken. Funny he wasn't slamming them.

I also feed spent grain and coffee grounds to my worms, then feed the worms to the fish. Far less messy as I don't have a way to make pellets yet.

I get my grain from local brew pubs and the spent grounds from the office.

Perhaps you could think of the worms as being living flexible pellets.

Left over brewers solids are great protein. With all the starch removed it should not be so bad as straight grain. I know its really good for cows too; they don't fart much after eating it.

Yes but i reckon they would just stag er around and piddle everywhere

This is awesome info. My buddy owns a micro brewery. Gonna have to work up a food for fish trade. Think rainbow trout would eat it?

How do you make pellets? Is there a press you can buy? Do they need to be dehydrated?

You would need to dry material for making pellets.

Each formulation would have an optimum moisture content for pellet making depending on the characteristics of the particular pelleting press.

Companies to google regards pellet presses include Lister and Petter (the guys who make the diesel engines in UK.)

Also companies like APV mitchell, Alpha-Laval, maybe Simon Rosedowns.

However there are many small scale high precision and well engineered machines from Argentina that are well priced if you care to import.

If it is backyard operation, maybe just dry the material and crush it into a rough powder.

Thanks Johnnie. I didn't realize that the presses would be $3-4k. That's way out of my budget. I understand why they cost so much though, especially the wood pellet kind. I've never seen a pellet press in action so I'm kinda throwing this out there as maybe a backyard way of doing things. Two presses (bench vice or drill powered something-or-other). One very fine mesh to remove the water. Place the remaining into another press with a shower drain kinda deal. Slowly press it out with a knife to cut into bite sizes then air dry.

Not going to be packed as tight as a commercial system, but I'm thinking this would cost about $200-300 and I don't imagine the fish care if the pellets fall apart. Think it would work or am I missing some important steps?

I think there has been some increased bad e. coli found in cattle that are fed brewer waste. Over in future of our food I think Angie has put some links about it.

The thing with tilapia and catfish and the omega is more about the really high Omega 6 in relation to the Omega 3 when you are dealing with grain fed fish. Wild caught are much healthier in the ratios of omegas. So, the more natural a diet we can feed our fish, the healthier they will likely be for us to eat. Out of balance omegas can cause issues with inflammation which in turn can lead to pain therefore causing us to take more drugs and pain killers which usually have negative side effects and the cycle goes on.

As to if comparing tilapia to other creatures, it does depend on which tilapia you are comparing. And remember that grass fed beef is healthier to eat than grain fed beef.

As far as pellet making goes..... I looked at a few of the pellet mills and definitely way out of my budget for a backyard item. But...... if you are interested in trying to make up something of a home made pellet, I was thinking of making up something like dough and running it through a meat grinder (minus the cutting blade) like making meat grinder "spaghetti" and cut the "noodles" to appropriate lengths (like pellets) and then let them dry before storing them. They would be light and definitely only useful as floating pellets I'm sure. I'm not sure how well it would work for all materials but I've done something like this with vital wheat gluten, wheat flower and sweet potato flower to make a kind of noodles and egg. Would be pretty time consuming to make such though.

Well shoot... That's definitely food for thought. The amazing thing about the article is it doesn't mention handling environments. Ethanol production is anything from "food grade", so my bet is that this problem is more related to the handling of the microbe happy warm grain byproduct rather than being a catalyst in the cow's stomach. The brewery I'd be getting the "waste" from makes organic beer so I'm not too worried. It's a very small operation and very clean. Plus I get free beer. That being said, might not be giving any of the fish to my kid. Hrmmm.... Maybe worms are a better solution...



Now you're talking. Cheap and Brilliant.

You can get a pellet maker for wood pellets for about $1200. You can also make a home made version that is like a screw press. You have to press 'strings' out onto a flay surface and then cook dry.

Making flake food only requires a blender and a dehydrator with the fruit leather making trays.

Alex brings home the spent grain from work, the chooks usually get it, but the fish have had some on occasion too

I think Timmy was looking into using the yeast cake left after fermentation as feed.... not sure what progress he made.

perhaps the two could be combined to provide a more protein rich feed

might have to do an experiment...(there doesn't seem to be a mad scientist smiley)

Himzo.