Feed into your system Vs. Food harvested?

ONG

healingdeva wrote:

How do you "process" them before feeding to the chickens?

We just throw the carcass and intestines to the chickens, They peck through the bones and leave them behind.

Course this is a problem, fish bones and heads everywhere. We dump them in some weeds in a low traffic area. Great protein supplement.

AquaOrganics

Hi all, been lurking... :twisted:

Just wanted to add that worms require calcium for their reproduction. Sooo, if you want to you could grind up those fish bones and add them to the vermicompost then feed the worms to the chickens as well (I don't have fish yet, so have been grinding up eggshells). Oh, and one last thing on worms: freeze your veggie scraps. It bursts the cells by way of ice crystals, and makes it easier for the worms to eat, thus breaks down into vermicompost faster.

DanDMan

You can dissolve the bones by using just enough water t cover them them and add phosphoric acid to bring the ph down to 3. In a few days once its all dissolved just add lime to bring the pH back up to neutral. Now you have a drum of fish emulsion fertilizer. Can be fed to the plants and/or worms. High in calcium, and plenty of phosphorus. Sells for $300 for a 55 gallon drum.

mornings

This is my first post here but I've been lurking awhile.

The below is a question I posed on the aquaponics list. I'm hoping someone here can give me some insight.

Thanks,

Jim

Quote:

I'm in the process of rebuilding a system, a 400 foot greenhouse with a 300 gallon tank with 5 4x8 drain and flow beds. The purpose for this is to create a prototype for a much larger commercial system. (to find out what I really want to grow and get better detailed experience for market)

One problem I'm having is getting a feel for what a system can produce. The only comments I've found to use as a gauge are from the Speraneos. Below is a quote from the ATTRA pdf that includes the Speraneos. I've seen similar comments in other places from the Speraneos.

"Tom once calculated the farm produces 45 to 70 pounds of produce for every pound of tilapia, an impressive yield. However, Paula explained this figure takes into account the cummulative yields of multiple vegetable crops raised during the 7 to 12 month time period required to raise fish to harvest." [my emphasis]

The Speraneos are heroes in my estimation so it is difficult to think that this is exaggerated. But I keep expecting to find an asterisk that gives a better explanation, to tell me what the "catch" is. When I use these figures (maybe I'm just using them wrong) I come up with such an enormous profitability, it would hard to believe that any farmer would do anything less.

Consider this: take one the Speraneo tanks with 6 beds. They used 800 gallons of water -- according to the Speraneo manual, they would have a maximum of 400 pounds of fish at end of the cycle (please correct if I am assuming something wrong). In the 7 to 12 month period (as stated above), that would mean one could grow between 18,000 and 28,000 pounds of produce. That would also mean that each 4'x 8' bed could to produce between 250 and 388 pounds a month! That is an incredible amount of food even if it is all vegetable and not fruit, like tomatoes. That says they (or presumably anyone) could produce 108,000 to 168,000 pounds of produce in their greenhouse, which actually could annualize to something greater if it only took 7 months.

On top of all this, if they start with fingerlings, not a graduated introduction of differnt sizes of fish. I would think they couldn't possibly be planting the each bed, full tilt until the fish got larger. So the average figure is based on not even getting full utilization of the beds -- unless they were doing something like supplementing the fish with fish emulsion.

I must be missing something. Does anyone have experience that will corroborate these figures? Give more reasonable ones? Or is it really that great?

DanDMan

I think that figure is for total vegetative weight. However, for example, a tomato vine can account for a large part of the weight, but its only the fruit you want from that plant. There are so many variables. It would best be proved by your own experimentation on a per crop basis.

GotFish?

It's nice to be able to complete the circle reguarding worms used for feed but my fish do not go wild for composting worms and its more of a pain digging the worm goo out of the pump intake for me. Maybe I over feed them worms but I'm going to stay away from feeding my composting worms to the fish. It always ends up in less water flow.
I know this is off topic but felt it had to be said, some composting worms will not fully complete the circle for some fish.

AquaOrganics

GotFish? wrote:

It's nice to be able to complete the circle reguarding worms used for feed but my fish do not go wild for composting worms and its more of a pain digging the worm goo out of the pump intake for me. Maybe I over feed them worms but I'm going to stay away from feeding my composting worms to the fish. It always ends up in less water flow.
I know this is off topic but felt it had to be said, some composting worms will not fully complete the circle for some fish.

I am going to start experimenting with making my own pellets to decrease the ratio of input to output. I was planning on using composting worms dried and ground (80% H2O by weight, 80% of dry mass is protein) in the mix. My idea for pellets was to run the wet mix through my pasta maker, and cut the spaghetti into pellets on the fly. Now I'm off topic... : (

Jaymie

Mornings,
welcome to the forum

You can get huge vegetative yields from an AP system. The way we worked our planting was to plant by seed, everything, while the fish were small. As the plants grew so did the fish and so did the plants.... When the plants are first sprouting they are not using the huge amounts of nutrients that they will later in life. The fish will catch up soon enough.

Your numbers are all given in pounds and I can't manage the quick conversions today

but we started with 250 fingerlings between 5-10cm in length. Those fish arrived at the end of January last year. We planted the grow beds at the end of March. From the tomatoes we picked 35Kg of fruit between June and October. We gave up weighing then. There was also daily feeds of various greens, beans and herbs.

TCLynx

Some one further up the thread asked what's the catch, I would say it is probably in the fact that we have to provide the energy for the flow!!!!! As in electricity for pumping and/or air. So we have the feed input and we have the energy input. If there is a catch to all this, that would be it for me. The initial capital to get things running is also kinda steep for a person used to gardening with other people's trash (bagged leaves and grass clippings.)

Or perhaps the real catch is the AP addiction that comes with it.

timmy

the feed and electrical requirements are tiny in comparison to the yield in ap.
if there is a catch to ap, it's that you can't use strong pest control which means it's more time consuming keeping pests under control.

steve

Quote:

if there is a catch to ap, it's that you can't use strong pest control

Which i'm tipping is a welcome catch by most AP'ers

GotFish?

I emagine you would need a lot of composing worms to make any sort of dent in the feed area. Dryed worms wixed into a pellet form way too much work for me, and I was cooking my fix food mixture pain in the arse.
The catch of AP I think is the initial cost to keep things going all year long, for those of us that see the four seasons. Lots of variables but its all well worth the effort. I can't count how much wasted veggies rotted in my frig (store bought). AP grown seems to have a longer shelf life and little is wasted if any. Only makes sence I spose seeings it hasn't traveled a few hundred miles to get to me.

janethesselberth

Welcome, Mornings!

The thing about quotes (or sound bites) is that there's never quite enough information, but whatever they are saying always sounds really cool.

Looking at Tom's quote of 45-70 pounds of produce to 1 pound of tilapia, my first question is whether that pound of tilapia is liveweight, headed and gutted, or filleted. (From the word 'produce', I think that part is all edible stuff, not tomato vines.) 1 pound liveweight becomes about 1/2 pound headed and gutted, and about 1/3 pound filleted. So if we assume that Tom is talking about fillets, that cuts all the figures above by a factor of 3. Iow, you raise 400lbs liveweight in the 800gal of water, and get 133lb of fillets. Using 60lb of produce per lb of fillet, that gives 7980lbs of produce from one system over the year. So each 32 sqft bed produces 1330 lbs per year, or 111 lbs per month. And taking it a little further, each square foot of growbed produces 3.5 lbs of produce each month, or 1.9 ounces of lettuce each day. OK, now we have something I can visualize, and that I can relate back to my dirt garden too.

Understand that my AP system is indoors and mostly devoted to ornamentals right now. So I'm not getting my 1.9 ounces of lettuce. However, if we assume that Tom is talking fillets, I think the numbers are workable in an expertly managed system.

RupertofOZ

yep. lets remember... the Speraneo have been doing it for twenty odd years or more.... they've developed asystem that works for them, with the system they've refined over time where they are....

Want to reproduce their results exactly... buy the place next door to them and copy everything they've done exactly.... :wink:

CRTreeDude

Just noticed this - I have never noticed chickens needing any help. The heads and offal will just be thrown to their general direction - I suspect that is all that will be necessary.

Backyard Aquaponics A place to discuss aquaponics

Feed into your system Vs. Food harvested?

Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics