Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I live in Carroll County, MD. I do above ground gardening and have a small fruit orchard with strawberries, grapes, blueberries, blackberries, apples, peaches, nectarines, plum and cherry trees.

This year we've added a duck pen/coop and acquired 4 Silver Appleyard ducks. No pond yet, but when we put one in, I'd love to rig up a "duckponics" system to filter the pond water and use the nutrients to grow cover crop that the ducks can eat (not sure if it's smart to use a duckponics system to fertilize human consumption veggies).

I would love it to get in contact with anyone that uses aquaponics with ducks.

Thanks,

smithmal

Hi smithmal,

There have been a few discussions on here about duckoponics.

Most, from memory, are about not doing it for producing vegetables for human consumption but you have already covered that.

Good luck and welcome to the forum.

Thanks for the response. I'd also be interested in hearing what people's thoughts are with using fish in a duckaponic system. I've read that a vast majority of the fish that we consume each year originates from fish farms from Asia. The Asian fish farm industries supplement their fish feed costs by feeding them chicken/duck/cow manure. Generally this leads to fish that are much lower in omega-3 content vs. what is found in "wild" fish and many "wild" fish are actually farm raised fish and increases the likely hood of foodborne diseases and general illnesses (avian flu anyone?).

So, what I'm wondering is if one were to insert fish into the duckaponics filtering system, is there a way to do this effectively (i.e sustain a water quality that allows fish to thriive) and can this be done so that the fish are safe to consume (i.e. what types of testing to the actual fish should be done while the system is in place)?

smithmal