Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

This is probably a brain fart idea.

We know that locust multiply quickly, they are used as food in many countries so nutritious, and they are vegetarians. If only we can somehow breed them in a controlled (cage?) environment, feed them with left over AP vege. Then use them as feed stock for fishes.

Actuly i was just doing research on how to grow my own, Seems if you can grow fish, you can grow these guys. besides the feed, it all seems pretty strait forward. they lay into the 1000s of eggs for each female, and grow to maturity fast. can make a sorter to feed fingerlings smaller ones and the rest to bigger fish.

And simple to start, go to a pet store and buy some feeder crickets, and experiment.

I am not at the experiment stage yet, got some other stuff to do still...still need fish.

hey sterfire. Got to be the California water or whatever that Californians love to think and dream, even something as unattractive as locusts and crickets.

My whole AP system is also in planning stage, so not at the growing locust stage yet. Not sure if the county will require license to do something of this sort.

BTW, I am in the Palm Spring area, what about you?

They are actually quite tasty
Many people breed them here for human consumption.

I don't know a lot about breeding them having never done it myself, but people here say it's easy.
They do it in houses made from shade cloth, not sure what they feed them on though.

Hi DuiNui, it would be FANTASTIC if we could find out how to breed them. It could be a step for organic self-sustainable feed stock for aquaponic; if the baby locust can grow by eating left over vege.

I can ask around, the problem is here that a kilo sells for more than a kilo of fish food, lol.
If I bred them I'd be better off selling them in the market and buying fish food.
Having said that, they are somewhere around 60% protein iirc.

Also I think you'd have to grind them up and mix with something else.
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7501
The bugs in the picture about 2/3 of the way through the first page of this thread are similar to locusts.
The Catfish would eat the torso but leave the wings and other bits making the water very messy.

My kids used to breed crickets to feed to our lizard. They used coconut fibre in the nesting area and kept them fed with some leafy greens, carrots and some dry food.

Here is a link to a totally wild epsiode that talks about them. If you forward to about the 4 minute mark it will show you how they do it. This is a special one as well because my daughter was the junior reporter for the day.

http://ten.com.au/video-player.htm?movideo_p=41457&movideo_m=102005

Orange county, right down the street from Disneyland....get to see fireworks every night.

I was thinking of growing *butterflies* roaches, duckweed, and BSF (black solider fly) as feed. Cockroaches grow really fast and they can't jump, and are omnivores and can be fed whatevers left over from dinner, pretty much the same with BSF. Since you know exactly what they eat, how could either really be dirty creatures, IMO the environment dictates cleanliness. Reason why I was talking about cockroaches is because my buddy has a bearded dragon and he was saying that cockroaches has a higher meat to shell ratio in compared to crickets, now I don't know about locust but that was his reason. Plus they breed like crazy and can kept in a simple aquarium type tank.

i have breed most feeder insects and would and suggest woodies as the type of cockroach (not sure wat there real name is but they are slower at running so less likely to escape) and not to bother with the flies the roaches are the best ones to do in terms of easiness

Hm you don't feed them the flies, you feed them the bsf in the grub stage. It's really easy to do if you make yourself a basic bsf system. The grubs can be setup to where they auto feed given how you wanna set it up. Once they get to a certain stage they try to leave the compost/food pile and are in search of soil - apparently they will travel up pipes at a 30 degree angle. So of setup right they can travel right into the fish tank if you direct it as so. Only reason I mentioned a few was because its never a good idea too put your eggs all in one bag. Plus it gives them at least a bit more of a diet. So when I get my setup rolling I plan on doing duckweed as often as I can + cockroaches + bsf during the warmer seasons.

I have so many crickets running around my garage maybe i need to start trapping them!

Growing locusts may be O.K. in U.S.A. but they are a pest here in Aus I am sure the Ag dept would take a dim view of them if they were to escape into the farming country as they can clean up a crop of grain in a day.

In small numbers grasshoppers wont do much damage. But to eliminate the problem you could also breed the same type found in a pet store as "live" food. From my understanding locust are very similar to grasshoppers except for their size. Maybe "locusts" is to much of a bad word to many people.

I am from Australia and interested in the idea of locust as fish feed. Love to hear from anyone that uses them on regular basis. Also interested in what other insects you feed your fish on a regular basis and are there any that you have difficulty in sourcing? I am especially interested in locusts and have a background in insect science.