Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello All:

I have been learning intensely about AP over the past few weeks or so as I'm fed up with my current job of making websites and want to be growing food. In years past I've taken Permaculture and Organic Gardening courses so AP is a shoe-in for me. We already raise chickens and goats and have friends who are farmers, so it's not a huge stretch for us.

Currently my plan is to build up a simple HF Greenhouse setup with a few grow beds and mini-raft system to get my feet wet (pun intended) and see if I like AP or if it's just a passing fancy. As mentioned above ideally I'd like to transition over to paying the bills by farming with AP if all goes well, though I'm troubled by a few things:
1: If it is indeed so profoundly effective why aren't more people doing it commercially? Is it really just because it is so new? Something doesn't add up for me there.
2: I'm very concerned about the inputs to the system - comparatively small as they are. It appears that the fish food is typically heavily corn/soy based and/or a byproduct of the destruction of the ocean. It smacks to me of externalizing/obfuscating inputs. I'm eager to be proven wrong on that - because I'd like to believe it's not true, but from everything I've read so far it appears to be the case.

I'm looking forward to learning here, and contributing back the knowledge I've gained to others!

Welcome Hermes....

The commercialisation of aquaponics is occuring... but not yet on the "industrialised" scale of hydroponics, or agi-business... and capital investment, and the novelity.. are the main reasons...

On top of that... nobody as yet.. has determined that it is indeed commercially viable... beyond a certain scale...

You're correct with regard to the fish feed.. at least as far as commercial aquaculture pellets are concerned...

And it is the one "fly in the ointment" of aquaponics... although certain species allow for a "vegetative" diet that can, almost... be self made...

And there has been work done in Australia to manufacture an "organic" pellet... with researched and proven results... sadly the demand just wasn't great enough at the time... to sell all the produced non-preservative based organic feed... which doesn't store like the commercial feeds...

Rupert - thanks for the reply. One question:

Can you elaborate on that for me? What scale do you think the cutoff point is? Do you think there are diminishing returns after a certain point?

It's an especially interesting question for me, as I would indeed conceivably pay the bills by AP farming (as mentioned above). In my case I'm not interested in getting too very large, though that's a subjective statement of course.

Thanks again!

Hi Hermes...

Markets are well filled by cheap hydroponic products and hydroponics is reasonably simple, it's been fine tuned for decades, control your environment with a greenhouse, add known quantities of known nutrient, harvest and sell. Adding fish to the equation throws in a whole new set of parameters. Also conventional ground grown methods of agriculture are extremely well known, researched and documented.

One of the biggest issues I see with AP is that different fish have different requirements, a fish which can be used in one state of the US may not be available to grow commercially in another state, therefore commercial aquaponics research from one area may not relate to other areas. Unlike hydroponics where nutrient is well controlled and available world wide. Plus hydroponic nutrient is highly concentrated, lasts a long time and travels well. Fish feed can vary in content from supplier to supplier, and has a reasonably short shelf life.

Most intensive aquaculture involves an element of risk, even for some of the best systems and most experienced growers in the world, fish add to the complexities, if you want to be a large commercial venture..

Growing plants in ground also works well, and people make a living from it, but it's not simple to make a living from it, it can be damn hard work. Likewise aquaponics can grow things well, but there's a whole level of complexity in growing commercially and making money from it.

And yes, it is still very new, 5 years ago you couldn't buy a book on aquaponics , but you could buy thousands of different books on hydroponics, or conventional agriculture methods of all different sorts.

There are plenty of people on this forum who might be the first person in their country with an aquaponic system. Look at zsazsa, probably the first person in Hungary with an aquaponic system. viewtopic.php?f=18&t=9276 He has a lot of research to do with the species of fish he is growing and the growing conditions in Hungary before he could hope to reliably and regularly fill a market.. Where as there are plenty of conventional growers who have been at it for thousands of years already producing and filling the market...

So far as external inputs into the system, all growing systems require external inputs. If you are removing minerals and nutrient from a system to be taken off site, then these have to be replaced by external inputs.

An interesting series of questions Hermes. I too am new to AP and am looking at the possibilities for commercial applications.

In addition to what Rupert and EB have posted, some of the factors I've been thinking about (which may or may not be valid) are:

Monoculture is easier, only one product (say a lettuce for hydro growers or barra for aquaculture), less capital investment in setup and equipment. A hydroponicist doesn't need to setup fish tanks, grading machines, fish solids removal etc. Likewise a aquaculturalist doesn't need to install NFT/DWC/F&D grow beds (I have serious doubts about F&D being commercially viable, but haven't done any research), deal with plant pests as well as fish pests etc.

Monoculture also has only one market, which has its advantages, only one product to market (lettuces, or vegies in general), one place to sell (say the wholesale vegie markets). Adding fish means you need to add a separate line of marketing, research and sales. EG you most likely couldn't sell fish at a wholesale vegie market, so would need to go to the wholesale fish markets as well.

AP is primarily vegies as your cash cow, fast growth rates (lettuces in 6 weeks for example) allow for a regular income, with fish getting to saleable size in 6-18 months (depending on species). You also grow a lot more vegies than fish, so the economies of scale on the fish side of things might be problematic. For example, an aquaculture barra farm I went to has 1 million litres of water, this is a commercial operation in Adelaide, which presumably is profitable and maintains economies of scale. Assuming the farm is fully stocked, that would require an insane amount of plants to remove the ammonia/nitrites/nitrates - you then, of course have to be able to sell them, at a profit. As an aside, the aquaculture farm in question change out 10% of their water per week, that's 100,000 litres dumped into wetland...what a waste.

The other thing I've noticed, since reading (here and other places) is that AP is about food production. Again I've done no research, but is food production the most profitable enterprise for a commercial operation (given you have to take on conventional farming, but don't fit into the organic crowd and make $$$)? Would it be more profitable, for example, to grow flowers, say for weddings etc? There may be the same market and economic parameters for growing flowers as there are for growing vegies, I don't really know, so it may be a moot point.

Anyway these are just my thought, I might be right, or more likely wrong, I am happy to be corrected (provided that correction is substantiated with fact). I'll keep reading and when I have a bit more time, I'll look at doing a business plan of some sort, while I keep getting experience with AP.

oh, I forgot, welcome to the forum!

So far, my experience in Houston has not been anything near any kind of break even. I have harvested a bunch of tomatos, but I could have bought that same ammount from an organic farmer's market in Houston for about $3. My fish are getting bigger, but only slowly. I am growing bluegils, and would like to grow Tilapia, but even with a decent harvest of Tilapia, price them by the fish at the market and they are not worth that much.

However, its fun and interesting and educational for my kids. I have really enjoyed it, and I feel like its just starting to hit its stride.

Two things that could tilt things a bit in your favour. Run a black soldier fly colony and you can "create" fish food from essentially compostable garbage. Actually they crank thru meat and cheese and other household non-compostables as well. The second thing is that Tilapia seem to be the "goats" of the fish world, in that they will eat jsut about anything.. ?? I saw that they can be fed grass clippings ?? That part sounds interesting.

I have a small system with a 100 gallon fish tank with about 20 various sized bluegils. I a splitting a bag of fish food with another houston area AP'er, and that bag will last all year and was quite cheap. I dunno where its ingredients came from, but at least it was not expensive.

Energy inputs are another thing that gnaws at me.

AP does seem to perhaps extend the growing season, and seems to conserve water versus a dirt garden. I would just be hesitant to try and make any real money from it.

WHere in central TX are you ?

RIchard

Earthbound and Dustintheshelves - thanks very much for the thoughts. To say this another way it sounds like AP doesn't fit well with the industrialized agriculture model. Too much risk, too many variables, etc. It's an industry which is very much "divide and conquer" - attempting to reduce the unknowns via genetic engineering, pesticides and fertilizers to achieve known results and then living off the margins. I am starting to see how AP wouldn't fit well into that world (which personally I'm thankful for).


Thanks for the info - I see what you mean.

I completely agree. Frankly I've been quite taken aback at some of the additives that organic growers put into their systems out here, while still calling their operations "sustainable". It's shameful, really.

I accept the reality that taking anything out of a system necessarily means that materials need to be put back into the system to replenish losses. My concern is mainly around what those inputs happen to be as of this writing. My sense of the situation here is that people are putting a good deal of energy into making sure their plants are healthy and chemical-free, but are most probably feeding their fish something abysmal from an agribusiness source like Purina. I am too new to the AP world to pass judgment based on this. The AP scene appears to generally have attracted a very capable and intelligent group of people who, if they're still feeding Purina to their fish, are probably doing so for compelling reasons.

As stated above - I hope to learn more about this and who knows - maybe I can figure out a way that at least for MY SITUATION allows me to set up a profitable AP business without using common fish food. Time will tell.


Something I've been mulling over is the idea of setting up a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) around an AP operation. It strikes me that it might be a very good fit - the AP farm wouldn't need to monocrop its vegetables to carve out a market for itself, rather the focus would be on providing variety for the member families, which sounds like a good match. Also as AP operations have year-round production it's a good fit for members who would expect product throughout the year. Part of the membership could include periodic fish delivery - slaughtered earlier in the day - for the freshest Tilapia they've ever experienced! Also the typical CSA customer is an educated one who understands the benefit of paying a premium for a higher quality product, is generally going to be interested in supporting an innovative ecological approach to things (and as mentioned - willing to pay a premium for that), and furthermore is expecting there to be a degree of randomness to the yields of the farm - something which would offer the AP operation a buffer against the variables stated above.


Thanks for the thoughts, merkurmaniac. I'm not too concerned about your results as it sounds like you're working with a pretty small system and it sounds like perhaps the system is young-ish (maybe a year old or less?). Experiences like that have been common for us with normal dirt gardening (putting a lot of time and energy into a little plot and not getting a lot to show for it), but I recognize this is generally because we haven't put a great deal of energy and resources into it and haven't scaled it up where we can benefit from the efficiency of a larger operation.


The water conservation is something that is really key here. I think you'd be quite shocked to find out how much water is used in normal gardening and farming. Especially with the year we're having here in TX - it's what gave me the final nudge over towards AP.

I'm around an hour outside of Austin.

Hi Hermes;
I'm starting a commercial operation in Minnesota, but the thing that is (hopefully) making it viable for me is that the local/sustainable food movement here in Minneapolis is crazy, and only shows signs of getting bigger. If you can find the market (and a CSA is a good bet) I think you'd do fine, but AP can NOT currently compete with industrial agriculture or foreign markets. You have to find a niche that doesn't compete with those.

IMHO, of course.

Yeah, we just had a real big rain yesterday, the first good one since march. My 210 gallon rainwater barrel was overflowing. We got 1.71" of rain. Up to this point, I have been having to fill the rainbarrel from my garden hose and then let it just sit. I feel bad adding water from the hose, since it means the rain is not keeping up. Funny thing is, I can drop the hose in and add 50 gallons to it, but the time I set my sprinkler to, is about the same that I set it to water y onions, butterfly garden, and dirt garden, except I did that almost every day. Even with evaporation, it doesn't use that much water.

What really consumed a lot of water was a blocked outlet from my fish tank, causing the pump to overflow the FT, and use up my "rainwater." I need to add a couple more overflows.

My folks live in Wimberley.

Congratulations, Karen! I'll be very interested in seeing what the challenges are to making your commercial AP system work. It seems that there's a good deal of info on homesteading and hobby systems but thus far I haven't seen a lot of information on best practices for commercial systems. Maybe it's out there and I just haven't found it yet.

Of course I'm sure it's going to be different for every circumstance anyways, but it would be interesting to see somebody's info nonetheless.