Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I seen some posting about salt water systems and I am knocking around some Ideas.
Food&Fish, I saw your comments about running a separate system with salt for better strawberry production I also see about your tomatoes, how much salt do you use and what supplements do you add?? What plants and fish do you have in that system? Red fish and blue crabs and brown shrimp live in sea water, reproduce in brackish water and the Red fish and blue crabs can survive and grow quite well in fresh water. The red fish need high protein feeds or feeder fish but the crabs and shrimp can live off of Detritus materials. Just thinking as a possible future system, prolly far future salt water system (Brackish water). I saw the charts of plant salinity tolerances I just wanted to hear/see some first hand experience.

Guess it depends on what you define as a "saltwater" system BRB....

Seawater is 35ppt..... AP systems (and RAS) can be salted from 1ppt - 12ppt.... depending on species and reason for doing so ....

Plants in AP systems seem to tolerate 3-4ppt just fine.... and up to 6ppt without problems for shortish periods...

Strawberries are one of the plant types that suffer with salinity over 3ppt...

"Brackish".... could be anything from 3ppt - 15ppt.... what range were you thinking BRB??

Yes the seperate system for strawberrrys will be just hydro in my main system i run between 2 and 3 ppt salt all the time as for stocking 5000 litre water 30 trout 1kg each 20 silvers 750gr each
60 silvers 150 grams each supplements are a good slurp of seasol every 2 weeks and 3 teaspoons celated iron once a month also remember theres thousands of worms in the grow beds [hope this helps]

I guess I really need to check the salinity of Lake Pontchatrain, and surrounding bayous. It differs from when the Mississippi River Spillway is open or not. In the spring I can catch Freshwater Bass, Salt water Red Drum and Blue crabs in the same water. I have a small shrimp boat and in the early summer I sometimes fill up my freezer (and my neighbors) with shrimp. I catch thousands of baby blue crabs as a by product which I normally just rake back overboard. I know they can live well in fresh water as well as the redfish which I have caught in small ditches chasing minnows into small marsh ponds. I know the university of south carolina sells the red fish fingerlings as well as the brown shrimp larva. I just do not know how low a salinity the brown shrimp can tolorate. I guess that would be the deciding factor of the three. I guess I need to do a little research. I haven't even built my new green house for my freshwater system yet.

The uni should be able to tell you all about them....

A shrimp boat......just like out of Forrest Gump......"over their Forrest, Over their "

I am jealous I would love a little shrimp boat.......BRB, do you have any photo's of it

Its just a little 50 hp -16' aluminum flat bottom boat with a set of 10' butterfly nets. Really just for inland bayous recreational shrimping, although I do need a comercial license. I hadn't put the nets in the water since Katrina, still a lot of snags out there. I'll prolly follow some bigger boats this summer to be sure of the bottoms. It's under a boat cover right now. but I'll get pics when it's set back up.

we used to trawl behind a bigger boat in the dark of the moon ( sorry C1, probably got the moon thing wrong ) and sometimes catch more as they stir the sand up.

If I made a little out rigger like that here in Aus. The Fisheries would have a feild day on me...

We either have one of two choices, a pro licence, or a rec licence..........Fishing for the Future is the motto in Oz

Night rigging with butterfly nets / skimmers, I do with the full moon as that is when the tide is falling and I push against the falling tide. The shrimp travel that way, the full moon brings them up off the bottom and the tide takes them out. Thats how they travel out to the open waters from the estuaries when they grow big enough. I perfer that over trawling as there is no mud, its clean and not near as much byproduct fish to deal with like hard head catfish, croakers, and stingrays. It's also much cooler in the summer with a little night wind to keep the mosquetoes away. And in the summer when the sun goes down the storm clouds fade away, and the stars come out you can see deep into the water as the nets webbing glows from the phosphous in the water and jelly water. Its really nice and peaceful. If you can't see stars after 10:00 at night you may want to go in if you are in an aluminum boat with aluminum A frame and aluminum night rig frames as you may be the tallest thing around... zap!!! Fishing is an easy profession to love!