Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello and greetings backyard aquapons,
forgive me if i word things wrong or miss spell a few things as im not the greatest with grammar and i will try to keep this as short as possible and to the point

i have found this site (Witch by the way thank you for the knowledge and wonderful resource both members, site admins and owners) and i have been researching aquaponics for quite some time now, and i have found that a commercial setup doesn't seem viable to most people.
im curious as to why?
now i know that the coast in running a farm like this would be higher then just planting in the open ground due to electrical coasts for pumps, heating cooling, and so on
but if done right, i don't see why a large profit could not be made.

i want to go over a quick idea with you and any help filling in holes, or even contributing to the idea will be appreciated

i have had this idea for almost 4 years now, ( i don't care about copy right cause if it gets stolen and done its better for the world in my opinion and honestly i don't even know how i would start it) but lets take walmart for example, i know a lot of you are from aus so whatever your big chain super stores are out there, ware i come from its walmart, stop n shop, lows, home depot exedra..
imagine if you will going food shopping, and the store you go to is filled with growing plants, instead of isles made of shelves, the isles are long runs of tomato plants, cucumbers, peppers, all the produce you could buy, herbs, fruits, and just like the grocery store bags are on dispensers all over the store. your carriage has scissors attached to them with a chain and a scissors pouch to hold them in and you go up and down each isle clipping the products you want. i would personally drive the extra few miles to go to that store for my produce and i think many people would agree. the air would be so fresh, the idea of bringing veggies home right off the vine and cooking dinner with what you know is the freshest of fresh foods you could possibly buy, the experience of it in general, bringing your kids there ware they can learn all about each plant and see nature in action first hand its a wonderful idea in my opinion.



it wasn't until i found aquaponics that i thought something like this was plausible, a mix of hydroponic systems running off the aquaponic design.
using large buckets filled with the gravel rather then hole trays it would be easy to have a huge reserve out back growing, and just like a store restocking the shelves with plants each morning.

if the tomato isle has a few plants that are all spent up just remove the bucket and replace with one from out back. being indoors you control the temperature and humidity all year just like the big stores do, but YOU have fresh produce all year UNLIKE the big stores do.... we all know (and there is know arguing) that fresh veggies from a garden or from your systems you guys run at home taste 1000X better then any market food, even some farm stand veggies aren't as good as the ones right off the vine, some of thous cucumbers have been sitting there a few days and i know that a cucumber picked off the vine and consumed within a few minutes or hours tastes way better then one that's been sitting for just 3 days, it makes a difference and we all know it.



if there are few plants with one or two toms left just pick them off and have tables like in the stores of ready picked things. just like in stores they have bakery's and delis and kitchens, have the same making all types of fresh spaghetti sauces or salads and baked goods, fried fish and meals revolving around them.
my point i guess is... doesn't this seem viable? isn't this better then shipping foods 3000 miles to our table... is it possible?
i just feel like this world needs a huge change and something like this wouldn't just be a step in the right direction, but a leap.. and that's what we need to be doing, leaping and running in the right direction before its to late to even move..

plus there are plenty of byproducts to benefit from, i keep reading that the sludge from a still tank to collect the fish waste makes great tree and shrub fertilizer, bottle it and sell it as such.
if you incorporate worm farming out back to feed the fish coast is down on foods for them and two more byproducts are attained, worm casings, and worms them selves, plus a natural garbage disposal for any dropped produce, bad produce or dead plant matter.

believe it or not people farm maggots as well, another free disposal system for fish waste (wingless fly's believe it or not) and another food for the fish ( we wont advertise that part)

and im sure there are more ways to incorporate a few more things in to this system to really stock the store up with natural products and a variate of different things.

this is really a dream of mine i guess, id love to see it happen and iv always been trying to think of new ways to make it a reality some day.. anyway thoughts?

many of the items your are thinking about are already in place in many different places and locations. The part that prohibits a lot of people starting commercial is number one education of the public and government that your operations and products are safe. Here in the US at least in my area I have never even seen an advertisement or signs promoting Aquaponics. I didn't stumble upon Aquaponics until I started researching safe self sustaining practices / independent living ; solar panels, row cropping, aquaculture, lettuce gardens and the like.

The biggest hurdle is going to be getting exposure to the public and acceptance that it's safe and the equal or better than the highly publicized "organic" label which seems to be the fad these days. The step after that is up front cost which can be quite high from what little I have seen. A fully stocked, on site, veg grocer would be a big step out from the "backyard" forum here; though the chemistry and step-ups could be learned through ideas here and experimentation a form of R & D if you will.

My opinion only of course market studies might show other wise.

I for one think that with the right design and educated personel aquaponics can no doubt be profitable... I wouldnt be in the middle of building a farm if i didnt.

But... Not to be a Debbie downer but there are a long list of issues that would make this idea pretty far from possible. Lighting, area needed for the actual plants (price per ft^2 is huge in a store like that), labor trying to move everything around (can't move a 15' trellised tomato plant very easy), and the number 1 problem would be the stupidity of our fellow humans. You would have kids slicing vines with scissors, a HUGE bio security risk, extreme amounts of waste from picky shoppers...the list goes on and on. Most people don't know anything about harvesting and I've seen first hand in our workshops that when you let people forage through your crops, they look like hell after. They don't do it on purpose but here is a huge disconnect between people and food. The vast majority just havent been exposed to vegetable production or harvesting techniques... Heck most probably wouldn't know a squash plant if it jumped out and bit them. Ive specifically taken eco-tourism out of my farm plans just for this fact. People i know sure but your not going to find tourists coming through for a browse. If you can farm, you shouldnt need that additional income to turn a profit... In fact I think the potential risk outweighs the profit. Again, this is if you want to be a real farmer and not a tour/workshop pusher. I had a similar idea years ago but have you actually looked into how much produce a walmart moves? It's a ridiculous number.

Love your enthusiasm though so dont quit thinking outside the box. This is just a personal opinion from some guy on the web .

Smart move Ryan... and you're a man after my own thinking....

I believe that would be ideal as well, but life teaches us that we don't always get "ideal" and the choice is adapt or go under.

I would love to see commercial operations that don't require an attached retail business or subsidation or even consulting to keep it's head above water. The point is that some folks want it bad enough to compromise. Other folks started with the retail and/or consulting and expanded to commercial.

I hope Ryan does make it as a "purist" farmer. There may be many successful operations like that in existence, though we'll never know because they keep it quitely to themselves...

oh to dream of a utopian society...

The most resilient systems (of any type) are diverse, you know, the don't put all your eggs in one basket theory. So to eliminate a potential source of income without doing a cost benefit analysis is foolhardy at best, but its horses for courses.

You can specialise, but you have to watch that speciality like a hawk because everyone wants to 'simplify' the process and make it more 'efficient', basically code for doing more with less, and you find yourself in a downward race to be the lowest price producer.

We have open days on farm and these do several things, the most important of which is to generate new customers who buy into us and our way of doing business. People come as ecotourists or agritourists, and a significant number leave as customers. Anyway it works for us and we consider it an essential part of our marketing.

We are entering into a JV that will put a small scale commercial AP on farm at last, and this too will be part of the agritourist marketing mix. AP products will cross sell our beef, pork, honey and eggs. People will come to buy a lettuce and fish, and go home with a basket of other produce too = more $$ for the same effort, which helps keep us viable.

i like that type of thinking