Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Wow, 40%? And they are all for the restaurant and export trade, I still haven't seen marron available in local fish stores and I'm sure there's a local market, I'd buy some if it was available.. I guess there are still better profits in export and restaurants, and not enough supply to fill local public markets..

something i found interesting was that the guy i'm working for at freo put most of his efforts into farming yabbies. at the time there was a huge shift by farmers toward marron. to my surprise he has made most of his profit from yabbies rather then finfish or marron. i thought of yabbies as a pest rather then a produce but it turns out there is good money in them. i guess everyone thought the same as me and got into marron and flooded the market. there was a shortage of yabbies and this is probably why he was successful.

i remember seeing a chart at tafe about the value of different aquatic species in australia. what stood out was that phytoplankton (algae) was worth something like 4-6 times the value of marron. Yet there are very few producers in WA even though the conditions here seem ideal. i guess its similar to solar power in WA which i feel has been tragically under invested in.

if someone is serious about making money in aquaculture i reckon they should consider algae production as a major possibility. the beauty is i suspect you don't need a license to sell it. it can also be easily shipped globally and is not difficult to culture. all it requires is knowhow, regular maintenance and a lot of space/ tanks. also as the aquaculture industry grows globally which is bound to happen, the demand for algae should only increase. algae is certainly not the most glamorous species to culture though.

it is certainly something i will be looking a lot more into over the next few years. i would like to farm algae/zooplankton large scale and fish/crustaceans, fruit/veg, worms ect on the side. i feel in this day and age diverse crop range is essential to farming success.

enough rant.

Surprised no one seems to have gone into producing brine shrimp. When I used to keep tropicals they were quite an expensive item and its not like there arn't a few salt lakes around, not really AP though.

BF

What are they using phytoplankton for? I heard a while back someone was thinking of growing the orange one to extract the Beta Carotene, what's the big market for it?

BF please excuse my ignorance but what would the algae be used for ?

I assume it (the algae) would mainly be used to raise zooplankton to in turn raise fish larvae.
BF is that guy in Freo raising his Yabbies in tanks??
There is definately no oversupply of either Marron or Yabbies at present.
Currently the state produces around 55 tonne of Marron and 65 tonne of Yabbies each year and the buyers I know are always after more.
EB I have seen Marron in Coles once and they wanted $56 a kilo for them.
Would you buy them at that price??
I sell mine to wholesalers and they pay me up to $34 a kilo.

ok, the exporters and restaurants can keep em....

safe to say the market is totally undersupplied. Wouldn't it be cool to fill that supply gap with AP produced seafood and have salad to sell on the side!

what troutman said.

i would have thought that marron would have been a better earner then yabbies in WA due to their premium price. perhaps its because they are to difficult to farm large scale and hence the shortage and premium price. yabbies are probably easier large scale with minimal maintenance or equipment. so perhaps if you have a lot of dams that you can't regularly attend to yabbies are best. if you have a few dams that you can attend regularly then marron would be better.

i will find out more details about the yabbie farming tomorrow. he does them in tanks as well as dams out at gingin amongst other places.

will let you know.

i guess it wasn't marron that flooded the market more so marron farmers flooded the industry. there were a lot of people attempting to grow marron and not many were successful due to the difficulty of culturing. from what i gather a lot of money went into marron farming and not many even paid off their costs. most lost a lot of money.

I have a good chuckle to myself every time people stuff this up, twas the same with grape's in the 80's, emu's and ostriches in the 90's and now marron.
Every farmer and their dog's wanted to have an alternative method of income, (fair enough ) But it eventually floods the market (grapes/wine) or is not that profitable (emu's/ostrich) and in this case very hard work.
There are a small number of marron farmers that do quite well out of the market atm but those that jump onboard hoping for a quick buck eventually die out losing a fair amount of cash.

setting up new sytem in green house also where the best place to get fish

In Bedfordale I have a swimming pool converted to a fish farmlet.

I did the UWA Summer School course on Aquaculture (focus on Marron) many moons ago (15+ years). I did a quick search for Brett O'Brien's photo and I think it was him that ran the course. If he has scars on his hands/forearms from a run-in with huge redclaw in the Tasmanian forests then it's the same bloke. If it's the same bloke he is very passionate about our freshwater crayfish

Photos please Adrian :-)

I`m in Muchea north of Perth, Just about to build a 2x 5000ltr tanks and 4x 18mtr by 1.2mtr raft system (similar to UVI system) all under a shade/green house which is 24mtrsx8mtrs. Just waiting for council approval for the structure, they say "could take 4 weeks" I say" YA WHAT!!"
Yep I know Patience grasshopper.
Will post pics of progress if anyone is interested
Mark