Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello! I'm volunteering in Indonesia and currently doing some research to establish a small-scale backyard aquaculture project in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia.

I'm new to aquaculture and I would love to meet some people online to provide advice!

The ponds will be quite small - maybe an average of 3x3m. They will initially just be a hole in the ground waterproofed with a tarp.

We want to feed the fish mainly with resources that can be grown in their gardens - compost, various legume leaves, napier grass, cassava leaves, cassave chips, ants and maybe black soldier flies if I can get a system up and running. Therefore I was most interested in Nile tilapia, as they can live off green water. Because of the breeding problem with tilapia I was thinking of trying a polyculture with African catfish. Does anyone have experience with this? Or any other suggestions?

It needs to be really basic - there isn't much money for technology and the people have low levels of education. I am currently puzzling over how to provide enough aeration for the tilapia. It is very flat here, so drainage and adding fresh water may be a problem.

So if there is anyone out there who can provide advice I would be very happy to meet you! Thanks,
Jen

G'day cjenn - welcome to the forum

Sounds like an interesting project. There's plenty of people on here who can provide advice.

Why don't you consider looking at some of the asian catfish varieties that they farm in Thailand and Vietnam, the Pangasius species?

Or maybe Koi to sell, they fetch a nice packet here in Oz, might be different in Indo though

Selamat siang, bu!

Welcome, cjennn. I agree with chillidude that seeking out local species will probably be best, all round. Do you have access to Java Barb/Silver Barb (Barbonymus gonionotus) or Hampala Barb/Jungle Perch (Hampala macrolepidota) in Kalimantan, or even Barramundi (Lates calcarifer) if you can bring them in from the coast?
The size of your ponds will be enough to keep some fish, even without additional filtration. You said conditions are fairly basic but do you at least have electricity available?
I wish you the best of luck with your venture, and well done for your volunteering!

Wow, so many messages already! Thanks guys. Its not so easy finding out what species are available locally, but I know we do have
- nile tilapia (oreochromis niloticus)
- african catfish (clarias gariepinus)
- giant gurami (osphronemus goramy)
- Patin - Pangasius....something.

I heard that the pangasius requires quite a large pond.
I haven't done any research on Barbs or Perch, but thanks for the leads, I'll have a look!
There is electricity in most villages, but sometimes it goes off for a couple of hours at a time.

you could try a variation on Charlie's suggestion and try carp - they fetch a good price as an eating fish in Indonesia.

Hi again. Thanks for everyone's replies.
- The main aim of the project is to provide fish for families to eat, integrated with organic home gardens. The yayasan (foundation) I work for really want to grow the fish using minimal off-farm inputs (as little pellets as possible!). That's why I was most interested in tilapia, as it seems you can grow them (non-intensively) with green water only. As supplementary food we can also grow legumes, azolla and cassava and we make compost from fruit waste from the market. I am experimenting with a home-made black soldier fly harvesting system, and I thought we may be able to harvest ants or termites as well. I read that it is good to add some catfish (lele) to control the numbers of tilapia babies. However I was wondering about the timing of adding tilapia and catfish - do you add the fry of both species together at the same time? Or should the lele be introduced later? What about stocking rates?
- Java barb sounds promising, I'm trying to track down some info on feeding and breeding them now - does anyone have any leads?

Thanks for your help!
Jen