Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

We raise maggots for our chooks by semi composting all of our non immediately edible food by products, things like citrus peels, onion skins, coffee grounds, tea leaves, small carcasses,bread nut pulp. Flies come and lay eggs, the maggots grow, the per compost gets hot, and after a week or so, we take it somewhere above a swale and dump it. Chooks scratch and peck, eat all the maggots, spread the compost, and manure it.

Does anyone raise maggots or other insects or insect larvae for their fish?

we have a grill hanging above the fish tank, currently with a piece of ham fat on it, waiting for the maggots to fall in

We also have a couple of small floating solar lights in the tank to get the early evening bugs.

The worm farm will happen soon.

I grow non-biting midges (bloodworms).

I grow termites, well i dont actually grow them there just everywhere, great protien.
We just go for a wander break of a few of the small nests bring them home and break the up for the chooks , they go ballistic !

Coool! Jaymie, I like the hanging maggot hatchery! When I get our AP system running, will try that. Also, the floating lights are a nice touch...

We have midges here, some of them pollinate cacao. Some of them BITE. They seem a bit small for my purpose.

We also have termites, and I bring them home for the chooks, too.

Our chooks aren't spending much time out in the yard lately (an ill-mannered dog) so we scrabble through the leaf litter each afternoon and give little cockroaches, big ants and any termites we come across to the fish.
It's fun to watch and the kids love it!

Alright, I know it may not be a popular idea with many, but the other day I was emptying out a spare tank that has 10cm of water in it from the sprinklers. In the space of a week thousands of mosquito lava had started to grow, and this got me to thinking about feed for fish..

If you knew the lifecycle well enough I don't think it would be to dificult to have some system of raised shallow tanks you can flush straight into your fish tank before the lava hatch out..

it SOUNDS like a great idea, but you could probably end up with a huge fine if you tried it over here

the home of Ross River Fever, Dengue Fever

Before winter set in I had a couple buckets of water in the garage, aging, and they ended up being breeding grounds for some mossies. I strained em out and the guppies went wild over them.
Not a bad idea EB. One way to make the little buggers serve for the better good.

Joel, brilliant! If done well, it would break the breeding cycle of mozzies, resulting in decreased populations of mozzies. This would be a huge benefit in areas where mozzies are vectors for diseas, like, well, for example, here, where the aedes egypti transmits dengue (no fun, that) and the anopheles mosquiot transmits malaria (also not too many chuckles).

Having had malaria for the first time in 21 years of living in Central America (figured I was immune, and doomed myself by saying so..), and dengue about 10 years ago, anti mosquito measures are damned attractive!

Not sure how much food value you could get from such a set up, tho...

Would be sort of like chinese? Hungry again 30 mins after they ate.

They'd be GREAT for baby fry though.

wouldn't bee too hard. Good kowledge of the breeding cycle (lot of info out there) let them lay the eggs then let the water dump into the main tank before they turn into mozzies, allowing a healthy margin for temp variatrions. A net couold always be placed over the tank if you're not confident of releasing the water before the metamorph.

Steve, I like the addition of the net! That would reduce the possibility of mistakenly increasing the population....

Don't they have mosquitoes the size of B-2 Bombers in Belize? I got bitten by tiger mosquitoes down in the Carribean--St. Lucia, I think. I itched for two months. Man! We have wimpy mosquitoes by comparison.

Refused to accept the concept of "wimpy mosquitoes" ... they're all just positively evil and sadistic ....