Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Big day yesterday! The team won Innovation in Research, one of four research awards, and placed in the top 8 in Robotic Performance and got one of 5 invites to the World Invitational Open.

The Innovation in Research was huge because that was the one thing the team has been penalized on in previous years. The judges really seemed to like the whole aquaponics concept this year (that's not easy to do because it's so subjective and not every topic will appeal to every judge) and we got tons of people asking us about it at the tournaments where we have our display set up. I think people were really impressed that the kids actually set up an aquaponics and feeding system to see if it would work, not just designed one.

As an added interesting fact, in our little display tank yesterday in the middle of competition, our guppy gave birth.

Tell them Gratz's..


It was the Guppy that did it.. Once the saw that the system was self sufficient.. they made it the winner..lol.

juergen

High five for the kids, g8r!

Great job! Congratulations to the kids and Mrs. Guppy!

Thanks! I think the guppy baby was our good luck charm. (The mama only had one, I didn't even think she was old/big enough to breed.)

I just realized we never added the videos they've made recently.

One of them doing a virtual tour:



Their top competition run, they were just 9pts off 2nd place:

You girls, and guys are kicking it.... congatulations....

So cool! Well done guys n gals. Your on the right track to awesomeness

I just bought the same tank as your micro system to try and breed up some cherry/glass shrimp for live food as well!

Hi there Guys n Gals

Congrats
I am going to show our 9 & 14 YO your system. You should be very proud of your acheivements and hopefully the system will continue even though its original purpose is served.

Again, WELL DONE

rsevs, let us know if you have any luck. We didn't try glass shrimp because they are supposedly difficult to breed in captivity, but you'd think they wouldn't be so cheap if that was the case. We have bred quite a few shrimp, but no where near the level to use as fish food - maybe now that we have a lot, the rate will accelerate?

Ron and Rupert, thank you! They system will definitely continue when the kids are done. We've got just over two months until the World Invitational so they may decided to try something else with it first.

I have read the same thing about breeding them and decided to try cherry shrimp. I just ordered 15 of them this morning. They are 4x the price of the glass one so i hope they do breed ok. I would expect the breed rate to be exponential, so your numbers should go up faster. One thing to bear in mind though is genetic diversity. You dont want a whole heap of inbred weak shrimp so you will need to add some new ones in. How often i am not sure yet. I think i will need a bigger tank to get a colony going, but my small one should do for now. What have the kids got for food for their shrimp g8r?

They have been feeding them lettuce, kale, squash, zucchini, pretty much whatever leftover veggies we have laying around. They boil them a bit and toss them in for the worms and shrimp. We do have a java moss ball and some algae chips just in case but they don't seem to like those as much.

I haven't worried too much about genetic diversity. I suppose now that we have enough we could split it in half, let them breed and then swap a portion of each colony every now and then? We have cherry and malawa together but they don't interbreed.