Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Was at the Elmore field day today and met the guy who did the aquaculture design for a system to be built in Sydney. He would not tell me much other than that it was going to be at the University of Western Sydney, Vet students would work on the fish (barramundi), 200,000 plants and that they had spent $1,000,000 on R&D and were about to spend $3mil more. All other inquiries were met with the response of "that's a commercial confidence" including the question of who were they getting to build their GH and how big was it going to be. Since I had already heard about the project through their GH builder who is building them a 4000m2 GH I thought that that was rather funny.

I know that people need to protect their intellectual property but really how secretive do you need to be? As soon as the thing is built a number of us will be able to organize a tour and all the obvious stuff will be visible straight away.

If it is truly novel then get a patent if it is not then even if you have full time security it is only a matter of time before people will get the details of your system.

Thats a mouthwatering system! Hope they manage to put it together.

Intellectual property has become even trickier in this age of collective consciousness. There are a lot of commercial concerns that share their info, albiet they keep their numbers private but still. They say in Islam that if you should spread whatever knowledge you have, this will increase YOUR knowledge, and I think this forum is a living example of that.

I have aspirations of building a commercial system too, but nowhere near with that amount of cash, Getting even $100,000/= would be a coup for me, but when I do I intend on sharing pictures and info about it here, corporate privacy can easily be maintained by keeping just a few figures confidential, and in any case an experienced pair of eyes can see all the details in your system no matter how well you try to hide them so whats the point?

Lets hope these guys choose to get on board, it'll probably do them more good than it will do us

That's bigger than "Barramundi Blue" was... and probably bigger than "Taylor Made"...

And "Taylor Made" didn't get any change out of $8million...

I'm dubious that they have the room at Uni Western Sydney... and I'd like to know how they got a license for "Barramundi" ... or any aquaculture license.. in Sydney....

Possibly on the basis of a "research" project... ... but that would imply a non-profit/non-commercial basis...

I'll poke around...

Just remembered... UWS has a campus out at the Hawkesbury Valley.... oodles of room out there...

But there's no way they'd get a license for "barramundi"... hell, no-one can even understand how Taylor Made got their licence

Yes I visited the Hawkesbury campus late last year as part of a campaign to stop the food bowl of Sydney being turn into McMansions. UWS have heaps of room AND money, but it will be an academic exercise only. A bit like the UVI systems, commercial applications will have to be greatly different due to real world constraints.

IP and commercial in confidence is a vexed question however I can offer some observations. In a former life I gave seminars and taught people how to make serious money - this was not an academic exercise either as I walked the talk giving specific personal examples and created a number multi millionaires along the way. Suffice to say that when given all the information and tools to replicate what I had done, less than 0.3% of the thousands seminar attendees actually attempted to replicate or do similar.

It is based on my direct experience of offering people a simple path to personal wealth (at the time I thought a powerful motivator), and the extremely poor take up rate, that I no longer worry about IP and commercial in confidence BS. In fact I would go so far as to say that those who are worried about such things are foolishly deluding themselves as to "their ideas" or systems true worth.

What sort of constraints exist in your opinion... and what practical differences do you think need to be enacted in order to overcome the constraints???


Please email me your system path to personal wealth... references as to your "successes".... and proof of personal income generation....

I'll happily "replicate" the steps necessary to becaome a mutli-millionaire...

When you have time, I could do with a lesson or three on how to do this

$1,000,000 on R&D Google must be getting expensive.

Hey mcfarm if you could upload a video or three of these talks it would be quite helpful ;]

Just remembered... UWS has a campus out at the Hawkesbury Valley.... oodles of room out there...

But most of the campus is in a 1/100 year flood zone which I thought was a big no no ?

So long as it's a get rich quick scheme - I don't have time to tool around making money slowly

I knew I shouldn't have said anything, and John your response indicates you would be in the 99%+ category - sorry. Anyway, way back before it was popular (early 1980s to 2000) I was touting property acquisition and renovation as a path to wealth. A simple strategy of; buy the worse house in a good street, do it up (effectively and at modest cost) rent it out, revalue, leverage of the increase in value, and repeat. Had bank lvr and income strategies etcetera, there was no negative gearing involved as the properties were all positively geared - neg gearing is a polite way of saying "you are losing money". There is still good money to be made in property, but it requires a lot of research and commitment - no free lunches.

Anyway that was in the past, it was fun, but only produced money. AP on the other hand, produces real wealth in the forms of food, self reliance and compulsory integrity.

The usual issues of translating a research facility are labour, running costs, marketing and so on. Rarely do they involve the production side of a business. This is almost a universal truism - you can build a better and cheaper mouse trap, but the world will not beat a path to your door to buy it.
But specifically the UVI system is heavy on electricity as design did not worry about the ongoing running costs. For example head height for observation and recording rather than energy efficiency, and elbows used instead of sweeping bends in the water pipe work. Doesn't sound like much, but it adds several thousand a year to the running costs. Also design layout did not focus on daily use of the system to minimise labour input. To be fair, UVI were breaking new ground, so this is excusable (and it is a research facility). But anyone designing a commercial system today who doesn't look at whole of life and whole of use systems is asking for trouble.

I am interested if you have up-to-date information on how this can be achieved in today's market. IMO such stratedy is possibly one of the only ways to achieve postive cashflow in today's market.

Better not go on with this as it is an AP forum, but one parting tip. Look for properties that have more than one income stream e.g. a house with flat attached or granny flat detached. Basically you buy one get one free - well almost. btw my reading of today's market is that rents are set to rise as people stay renting due to interest rate rises. Rate rises are a double edged sword though, means you have to pay more for any borrowings and there is a delay in rent increases due to lease terms.

OK - no more property discussion in this thread or earthbound will jump on us

G'day

I am the guy that talked to you at the field day the project is to be built at the university of new south wales at Camdan in western Sydeny not the university of western Sydeny. And yes I signed a legal document and I need to make sure I do not get my arse kicked and sued for talking to much.I hope you can respect that. All the best with your project.