Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi I am a new member from St. Peters, Mo. (Near St. Louis). I am wanting to start a aquaponics garden/fishery (thinking Tilapia fish) but would like to see a working one before I get in too deep!! I heard there was one in New Bloomfield, Mo., but can't find it. Does anyone know?

Welcome!

Hum, Not sure about any systems near you but I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who will give you a tour if you happen to be traveling in their area.

What kind of scale of operation are you thinking of? Heated greenhouses? Would definitely need heated greenhouse for the winter in your area if you want to do tilapia year round.

TCLynx - I plan to start small - one large bed and tank of 20 - 30 fish. I thought I might be able to avoid winter by harvesting in late fall and keeping breeders in large aquariums in winter, then back outside in spring. Is that feasable? We get shots of really cold weather in winter and I don't want to invest in greenhouse/heater stuff.

It has been done. There are a couple of members in PA that have raised Tilapia.
Janet isn't active on the forum currently but her thread might be useful to you if you decide to set up an indoor breeder system for winter operation.
http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=735

Then we have Dave Donley who has done the seasonal system for a while.
http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2645
http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4999

I personally would probably try to steer you to some type of fish that can handle cooler weather since tilapia don't grow well in water below 70 F so if you can't get your water quite warm early in the season, you might not get many large fish by the end of the season. (When people talk about how you can grow tilapia out to some particular size in 6-8 months, they are probably talking about with water temps of 86 F, high protein feed, good water quality, plenty of aeration, and all male fish. As soon as any of those things fall short, the growth is not as perfect as the claims.) Tilapia are great, they do grow fast and can survive things that few other fish can but don't be fooled into thinking you can grow 60- 2 lb fish in 6 months with 68 F water, mixed gender stock, and duckweed as your only feed source and no extra aeration in a 150 gallon tank because that is probably not gonna happen. I'm in central FL and I might be able to manage quite a bit of tilapia over our warm water season (April-Dec) and keep fry or perhaps some breeders over winter inside but I don't even want to try to keep many tilapia warm over winter outside here again (cost me too much last year.) However, my catfish kept eating all winter long and I only had to reduce their feed a little bit during the coldest of spells here.

bbreed, welcome to the forum. The US membership seems to be growing.

There was an outfit in White Plains, MO . Not sure if they are still in operation. They were one on the earliest aquaponics outfits on the net. Here is a link.

http://www.jaggartech.com/snsaqua/page2.htm

xtreme contributor
Thanks for the referral. I logged on to White Plains and they are still there.