Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

AP just feels right! 20 some years ago I was entering the field of computing and would stay up late nights in the labs while my collage friends partied. Nerd - perhaps. I just could not believe that I was going to get paid to have so much fun. As the years past though - well - it has become a job. I do it well and every once in a while I get to work on something that brings back those old feelings...but less and less so. AP feels like computing did 20 years ago...fresh and exciting. And if I could turn a new late career with it - great...I know it could be an exciting way to not be to bored during retirement also. Tradeshows workshops and such just sound like a lot of fun.

I just got back from dinner with some mates who have no end of fun teasing me about fish and - oh god - don't bring up the pee in the FT thing....lots of laughs, but it would still be nice to interact with people that are a little more green-minded.

Now - I am no strangter to business and have a good handle on running a store. It just seems that if I spend 80% of my waking hours thinking about AP and near as I can tell 100% of my sleeping hours that perhaps I might enjoy it as part time or full time career...and certainly a retirement hobby.

Go for it DV.... just be prepared for the time it takes to build your profile and awareness... and the impact that might have on your bank balance...

In the interim... keep your day job...

And hey...


You'll still spend the same amount of time thinking about it.... it's just that you'll probably spend the same amount of time.... paying for it.... :mrgeen:

Make sure you keep your day job or have lots of backing would be my advice because it is certainly no way to get rich as many people have already mentioned.

This is now my 5th year of not working for others, devoting full time to aquaponics, buttt...... I remortgaged my house 5 years ago and doubled my mortgage so I could still live without any income coming in. Every cent of book and DVD sales went straight back into the business while I lived off the remortgaged house. Moved into the shop in late 2007 after more than 12 months selling stuff online. The shop was very cheap for what it is, and I needed somewhere to store stuff. Faye volunteered here at the shop for quite a while as things slowly started moving.

Faye started getting paid a small wage early in 2009 I think, and got in trouble because she was paying herself under the minimum wage which is against the law.. Mid 2009 the business became PTY LTD which meant that everyone would have to be paid, so minimum wages were the order for the day.. I couldn't see how the business was going to be able to afford to pay wages but I was running out of my remortgaged cash so it was going to have to start paying for itself soon.

It's been almost 12 months now we've been supporting 3 minimum wages, 1 trainee, and one or two part time people for perhaps a day or two a week. It's not easy, there have been some very dodgy periods where Faye and I have skipped being paid because of lack of funds, and you only ever get paid 38 hours a week even though the hours are much longer than that. I guess a lot of money has been spent in building up the business, we now have two utes and a truck a couple of different moulds for components, lots of display systems and a fair amount of stock as well as office equipment and tools etc.. We have done all of this with only minimal cash borrowings so that we could keep the debts as low as possible, only buying as we could afford things.

You certainly have to love what you're doing, but more to the point, you have to realize that you aren't going to to be spending all day doing the things you love, playing with plants and veggies. Most of your time is spent in the office or dealing with customers or doing boring repetitive rubbish rather than having any fun playing aquaponics. And after many years of living aquaponics 24/7, some of the questions can become a little repetitive, but you have to be able to bite your lip, smile and give your answers for the 56,346th time..

I'd say definitely start small, you have to drum the interest up locally and that's a constant thing, over and over. If can start part time on the side without having to invest too much up front, that's ideal as you have less debts to support.

+1 EB - discovered that when we tried to make a living from a food business - most of time spent doing paperwork and making deliveries, neither of which is the good stuff.

Snap DV. Or should that be +1... Whatever, I agree wholeheartedly.

rant {
Writing software aint what it used to be. Things got so over managed where I was. Heaven forbid you spoke to your customer (user) without going through layers of architects (you've already decided on the platform and tools years ago) and analysts (who do a half baked job mindless of technical limitations) and actually found out exactly what they wanted and devised a way to exactly handle their desires. Forget efficiency, it's about the process and pinching funds from your fellow companymen with the aid of non committal project managers.
}

Great advise EB. Any chance of a BYAP franchise NOR (north of the river for you non Perthites)?

There is definitely room in the US for several quality AP companies/products... Just a HUGE investment to assemble the parts/molds/stock etc AND educate the public. Still, it has its attraction.

For me I'm not so much thinking profit as simply trying to educate locals on a better way. My vision is small production co-ops with a dozen participants that have 1-3 GHs and medium size systems, then pooling our produce for local grocery distribution.

Another thought I saw mentioned somewhere is setting up restaurant accounts for live herb pots/baskets that are rotated every week to keep them in truly fresh (pick when ready to cook) herbs. I've pondered some designs for a system with removable pots that can be delivered to restaurants on delivery day for a monthly fee...

A very large commercial lettuce or herb setup is costly and a bit of a risk, but the above two ideas are scalable and beneficial in every community...

CB

I think local markets are a good way to go that could perhaps even be appropriate for the very part time farmer to take racks or trays of live produce to the market one day a week. Would of course work best on salad and herb crops that are well suited to NFT, raft or tower culture but there would still be space in a boot to take some boxes of the other produce that might be growing in the gravel beds during different seasons.

We have a couple produce stands not far from where we live and I was thinking about stopping by and seeing what they would give me for a cooler full of lettuce or other produce when I have it available. Then again there is a weekend market not far from us where it would be possible to rent a boot and sell produce on the weekend but I haven't gone in to find out the details yet.

These ideas are definitely not a full time income but perhaps enough to bring in some pocket money and promote local food!!!

Good post Joel, and I know the feeling At least I have a good income to allow the AP system to go ahead

My 2 cents worth on various things...

Back in the 90's I ran a business for several years with 4 other equal partners. It's great being your own boss, but the stress of running your own company and keeping payroll going is unbelievable. We eventually sold out. We were generating $65 million/year and had roughly 70 employees....wasn't too bad. It was before the Internet craze and it wasn't as cut-throat selling computer accessories.

Now that I have a family, it's harder to justify the risks of running a business, so I work for "the man" as an IT Director and have a nice steady income and lots of perks...and more time to spend on Aquaponics!

I also own around 55 acres of farm land that I let the local dairy farm use (for free since they don't make any money). If you plan on going into a commercial growing business it can be even harder than running a computer business. The gov's control over the food industry is incredible and once you get to a certain volume of food production, the regulations get even tighter. I've had my share of battles with the USDA on just simple issues like crop rotations and weed & pest control. I'd hate to see what they would have to say about feeding plants with fish poop.

One of the products that my employer makes are controllers that are used for food sanitation. After the e coli scares a couple of years ago that part of the business start to take off...but you have to feel bad for the small farmer that has to drop $100K on a lettuce washing system!

Is a good point Gem, I haven't set up as a seller, but have plenty of tours and try and send business to BYAP, heaps of interest but not much action, but I think the action will soon happen, the GFC that never happened (here anyhow) tightened peoples pockets a bit

I can't remember who it was, maybe troutman, maybe monya, but they mentioned that Commercial sized AP meant that you couldn't go on holiday. Basically you're entrusting your entire crop - lets say $20k - to some part timer or friend, and if anything goes wrong you just want to BE THERE. So you spend your time on holiday worrying or just don't go at all. Your tied to going in and checking parameters and the system every day.

Ya know, that is not just a commercial sized AP set up. It gets more and more difficult to go on holiday with many "Farm" type operations. Anything big enough to be even remotely "commercial" is big enough to make leaving town for a week a challenge. Even for us leaving the animals for a week feels like an imposition on the neighbor who is care taking for us. Imagine the small dairy where every 12 hours the cows need to be brought in and milked, it isn't like you can just show some one around and leave them to if you want to go away for a while.

But I think it is still possible to do quite a bit even on a part time scale though you won't be supplying a chain of groceries with all their lettuce year round from a small part time operation.

Oh man, how true lol Thats where good system design comes in. Multiple layers of redundency, backups etc. I went away last week with the family for 4 days, no one was monitoring the system which is brand new, and just stocked with 1000 trout.

I was a bit stressed, mainly becuase I have none of the backups installed yet

I think that with automatic water top up, and battery backup pumps, you can go away fairly confidently, just having someone check it daily. It actually takes quite a while for water parameters to get really bad, as long as there is air.

We actually make our fish gathering trips the holidays we take. Troutman and the southwest for Easter. Jurien / Canarvon / Troutman for Silvers in November

I think this is true of systems like yours, OBO, designed with reasonable stocking density. Not everyone sticks to the prudent design rules and reasonable stocking densities. Or in the case of many commercial operations, they have to push the limits to make the large scale economics work and therefore can't easily take relaxing vacations.

What? Running a small business and having holidays??? That's like having day and night at the same time, it just doesn't exist...