Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Biofuel possibility.
When I did some research on Daphnia I found that the main source of nutrition was manily the stomach contents and the oil reserve in the carapase.
As algae is the fastest assimilater of nutrient and people are harvesting algae for the oil content..... I was wandering why we don't just harvest Daphnia after they have harvested the oil content out of the algae....

Just some thoughts...

Rob @Aquagold

Then whales from the daphnia and harvest whale oil!

Maybe in a greenhouse the daphnia could live in a dark area and you could grow the algae in the sunlit areas and pump them to the daphnia, then back to the lit area, recirculating.

AG could you post some links, I find microbe culture intriguing, because the numbers are so huge and they would be easy to pump around.

As some of the new bio-fuel algae has incredible % of oil you probably wouldn't need to but...... a great subject indeed!

Just remember you need a few different colonys going at once in case you get a big crash.
I would also consider putting the daphnia in underground tanks maybe? Just in most areas summer will SMASH them.
Temperature is going to be the big ?

Don, I heard of a coal fired power plant in Israel that uses the boiler exhaust after all the heat recovery is done uses the CO2 to aerate algea ponds. The algae which is the bigest user of CO2 recovers much of it and the algae is used to make vegi oil/bio diesel. Daphina would be a posibility but do not know how tollerant to the other nasties associated with coal they would be. If the same power plant was used with wood pellets instead of coal the biodiesel could be made and the leftover algea could be used for Daphina for more biodiesel or animal feeds. and with less nasties. Certain woods produce creasote and other nasties when burned and poison the waterways so the type of wood would have to be carefully selected. But I agree there is great possibilities in algea. After all Algea created most of the fossel fuels we use today just a long time ago!

I saw a bit on TV once about a power plant filtering the exhaust through tubes of liquid growing algae on the roof. I suspect the ponds are a bit more cost effective but essentially the same idea. Great to use waste from one fuel to grow more fuel.