Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

for fish to stock with have a look at what your garden center has, most of them have an aquatics bit now
look for ones that sell koi, our local one even sells stickelbacks lol

Yeah, but they need to be "oddball" fish, if you know what i mean.
Something no one else would think of using

i dont know anyone who has stickelbacks lol

piranhas?

oo there is a piranha that only eats veg, so it would help grow its own feed, all it needs is a water heater

Good morning Draykcab

Firstly the crayfish route. We tried for 2 years to get permission to keep crayfish here on Anglesey. We applied for licenses with CEFAS, the Environment Agency and the Countryside Commission for Wales and had site visits from all and sundry. Most of the agencies were unfamiliar with aquaponics and we had to put them right. Some areas of the UK do not need a licence to keep signal crayfish and those codes can be obtained from CEFAS/Environment Agency.
In the end we were refused permission because there are no signals on Anglesey.(As far as they know) It was suggested that we kept white clawed crays and were given contact numbers of people currently keeping them but like so many of these specialised groups they did not have the good manners to reply. In the end we decided that the world would still revolve if we focussed on other things.
We looked at shrimps but they are difficult to produce in meaningful numbers so they got shelved. We also shelved blue whales, sea crocodiles and electric eels.

As it is forbidden to write obscene language on this forum I will not comment on the state of this country.

WD and OH.

Just an addition to the above. The guys who came from the aforementioned organisations were brilliant and filled all the myriad of forms needed to get licensed, so when you apply to CEFAS you will get some good blokes giving you good info.

WD and OH

What about freshwater crabs?
Are they both "out of left field" and suitable for keeping in an aquaponic system?
(But with a little bit of extra "security" to stop them escaping, via any openings in the tank?)

Draykcab

hmm no idea on those or how much ammonia they would produce for your system, thats the good thing about using fish you can start with a few and increase till you got the balance right, i would not know where to even get them in the uk

I like the cut of your jib Paul and admire your eccentricity (so British!), but with the legacy of legislation left by Messrs Blair and Brown do you really need to make your life any more difficult!?

Up here in the lakes we have a rare fresh water shrimp that you would think they would encourage anything to increase the numbers but I reckon it would be easier to get a hunting license for osprey! (Not that I would want to... Thinking about it. I bet they (ospreys) don't need a license for trout fishing!)

There's many ways you can have more than one tank, not that there's anything wrong with CHIFT PIST, just that it's one option out of many.

What about tench... When I was a kid in Leeds a garden centre sold tench, Rudd and roach.....

Or even better would be perch as they at least taste nice...