Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Somebody better look to see he hasent got the same email add as that bloke from america who was going to play buggery with a big stick last year

We've never claimed our fish is organic. There is no way we currently can. In the USA there is NO organic certification currently available for fish, so it is technically impossible to get them certified. Congress is working on a definition and regulations that handle it.

Some operations have "certified organic" on their fish, as they've certified them under the livestock certification rules from some less-than-honest certifying agencies.None of these aquaculturists that we were able to contact in our long process of becoming organically certified were ever able or willing to tell us where they got their "organic" fish food. They simply claimed they fed organic to their fish and that was that. We were honestly trying to find an organic source of fish food because our certifying agency, Oregon Tilth, required us to if we could.

We have gotten all our produce certified organic, and by the terms of our certification are required to procure an organic fish food as soon as one is available. This is the kicker, the chicken-before-the-egg question. We can all farm fish organically when we can buy an organic fish food. We found a guy in Illinois somewhere who was making small batches in a local mill, but to get certified he had to move to a bigger mill, and clean the mill from its previous use each time before he used it. He estimated his organic fish food would wholesale for $1.75/lb. This was at a time when we were buying non-organic fish food locally for $0.37/lb. So it's really a problem. Anyone have any information on any organic feeds available at this time?

Thanks for clarifying that... your vegetables are certified "organic"... but your aquaponics systems aren't....

Here in Australia the non-organic input of the fish feed would probably prevent certification of even the vegetables.... and we certainly don't have a body that grants "interim" or "qualified" certifications.....

There is a business in Australia producing an organic native fish feed... and I believe that they are currently attempting to gain "certification"....

Problem as you say is cost... or more particularly for most AP'ers quantity... as the manufacturer only supplies by the pallet.... even so unit price/kg is considerably dearer than traditional feed....

organic certification for tilapia should not be a major problem as you can produce your own -organic- fish feeds

frank

Well, many people promote tilapia as being vegetarian and therefore cheap to feed. Odd thing is many of these same promotion claims insist that tilapia have super fast grow out rates. However, I don't think you get to have both at once. Chappo keeps telling us that tilapia growth rates will greatly suffer if you substitute more than 30% of their diet with vegetarian stuff.

Now if growth rates are not an issue and taking 2 years to grow out the tilapia won't screw up the economic side of an operation, then yes you probably could manage home grown tilapia feed. Unfortunately, I doubt that method really works for a commercial set up and on the backyard scale, organic certification is probably not worth the effort.

Hopefully we can hear more about grow out rates and profitability of tilapia from our new members.

They claim growout in 12 months... and yes your points about substituted diets are perfectly valid TCL.... and would need to be weighed in light of cold hard economics... including FCR...