Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello everyone. I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself and say that i look forward to reading through this site and participating as i get set to launch my own facilities.

My name is Rob Lak and i am from western Massachusetts, about 20 minutes from the small city of Springfield. The town i live in is semi-rural becoming more and more a bedroom community as the farmland gets gobbled up for residences. I happened to luck into a decent sized parcel of 5 acres, more or less, near the center of town that should provide me with space to build whatever i need to support this hobby (for now). The back 4 acres are zoned as agricultural and i plan to set up some greenhouses that will be my space for aquaponics.

My background is basically that i have always been interested in aquaculture... my goal 30 years ago was to start the first American lobster farm and after a stint in the US Coast Guard, i went to school at the University of Washington in Seattle chasing a degree in marine biology. Life got in the way and i left school after 1 year and i have been pretty much working with computers since.

Now that things have settled down 30 years later, i can get back to my original goal though it's being modified some by the fact i don't live on the coast. Happily, there hasn't been a whole lot of progress with lobster farming since!!! Only 1 commercial venture that i can find growing the American lobster (Finland).

I have two projects that pertain to aquaponics that i have started in the past year.

The first is, i have begun to set up my first greenhouse. The plan is for a 52 x 26 (in feet) Greenhouse. Now, living in New England and having a greenhouse are almost mutually exclusive when one talks about year round production because winter temperature and fuel prices can't compete with importing produce form more tropical climes (Local weather calls for daytime highs of freezing or below and nighttime temps of ~ 2 degrees F for the foreseeable forecast). So the goal of this greenhouse is to be completely self sufficient or as nearly so as i can make it. The plan is to insulate the greenhouse with dynamic insulation, insulation that is removed during the day to allow solar heat to be trapped and then that can be set back up at night to drastically cut the heating expenses. The high tech method i have chosen for this is soap bubbles! Check out solaroof.org for an overview of the concept that i have been tracking for about 4 years now.

The second project is to start my lobster farm. The problem is, being so far from the sea, i need either to set up for artificial seawater or i needed to find a freshwater lobster to cultivate. The latter seemed the easier option. For now, i have settled on raising redclaw crays. Last March, i was part of a group (TrapicalCrayfish.com) which imported some of the "Walkamin" strain from Australia. While we all had problems initially, i have now at least been able to maintain the numbers of crays and unless i make a large mistake, it should not be too difficult to increase their numbers. Currently my system is a series of small bins that spill the overflow into a low tech biofilter and then into a pumping container. I don't spend a lot of effort yet in enhancing it but hope they will provide me with brood stock as i get the greenhouse set up.

I have not made a decision as to what will be the crop for the hydroponics side of the equation though i have several candidates.

In the end, my system will need to be an intensive system. I want it to make money, not simply provide me with some fresh organic produce.

So i have a long way to go. Hopefully i can find a few tidbits of info here that will help, and of course, as i progress i will return the favor by listing my full efforts here.

I look forward to participating and meeting everyone!

Poppa
(Rob Lak)

Hi Poppa!
Welcome!! I just figured out that you can get Redclaw and Malaysian Prawn from Miami Aquaculture. ( http://www.miami-aquaculture.com/lvstk.htm ) They sound pretty cool, but I don't really have space for them. To my knowledge, no USA folks on the forum have crayfish, but a lot of the Aussies do. You probably noticed.

Doug Basberg is building a pretty high-tech passive solar greenhouse. You might want to read up on his thread and compare notes with him.

I've actually heard of the soap-bubble thing. That sounds great!

We all eagerly await pictures of what you have so far!

Welcome Poppa!

Sounds like a unique project, I'm sure we'll all be very interested to hear about the plans and your work as it progresses! A lot of the Aussies here are growing yabbies and marron. They both look like a lot of fun.

(I love it when they call me Big Pop-pa (from a Biggie Smalls rap))

Poppa, Hi and welcome!
Your "Walkamin" strain will probably be referred to here as Redclaw Crayfish. There should be lots of information on them in the forum.
Enjoy your stay.

Hey Poppa, g'day (someone older and more refined than me - good)

I am going to be following your redclaw challenge as I intend to get some in the near future, here they are good at escaping

Hi and welcome.
Soap bubbles are new to me, but that sounds like great idea.
Good luck with the redclaw

Thanks for the welcome all...

Janet, thanks for the heads up on Doug's work... i might as well start there as i go through this site.

Dave.. Thanks for the welcome. Marron are also something i'd be interested in getting my hands on later due to the larger possible sizes they can attain. Because of the more narrow range of water parameters they tolerate and the slower growth rate, i thought i'd get my feet wet with the redclaw. Yes, it should be interesting.

Jaymie... The Walkamin strain is a variety of redclaw, but it is a particular type of redclaw that is the result of an Aussie breeding program. This particular strain is noted for a more rapid growth and size ~ 30 % larger than the typical redclaw and also has a higher than normal reproductive rate. Net increased value has been assesed at 37% greater than the Flanders or gilbert strains it is derived from.

EllKayBee... Yes, i found out early on how adept they are at escaping. But i have come to believe that the problem i encountered was due to issues that arose from shipping. We experienced some logistics problems that, in my opinion, resulted in ammonia burn to the gills. Even after the crays that survived became stronger (we all lost about 95% of the shipment) they continually tried to escape. I lost half of my remaining crays when they repeatedly crawled out of their cages and would die after finding them up to a week after their traveling. My theory is that the gill damage caused them to suffer from oxygen depletion and they could not tell the difference between their own injuries and low DO... so they tried to find better water.
A year later when most of those that i have are the result of a brood hatch, they are able to breathe normally and i have had no attempts at escape for over half a year.