Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Jees Rupt i thought things were a bit quite over there

And would it not be even better to consider the amount of feed used rather than the number of fish? I would have thought that you would need more filtration capacity to keep 100 trout than 100 Silvers as they would eat more food over a given period, grow faster and therefore respire more.

Then with all those nitrates produced over a relatively short period more plants to remove the nitrates.

You are right Marc but it gets a little complicated when you base your guidelines on feeding rates. Plus the only species and system that has been studied sufficiently to base your design on feeding rates is the UVI system and tilapia.

The first thing I ask new customers now is what the volume of their tank and growbed is as I got sick of turnig up at customers houses with 100 fish to find that they were going to go in an IBC.

Point taken Stuart but for newbies could it be a better (though not perfect) rule of thumb expressed as say 25 Silvers per 500l of growbed and say 10 trout per 500l of growbed? As people get more experienced and familiar with their system they can tweak this up and down.

Some people are producing trout over a given period of 700+gms while others are producing trout at 350gms. Clearly the amount of food and therefore filtration and plants needed to remove the nitrates would be significantly different. But it would be better to start with say 10 trout per 500l of filtration than 25 or more (or a 100 if you had a 1000l tank ). At least you can slow down your feeding if you run into trouble. It is less likely people will cull fish and inevitably wait for nature to do it for them, leading to a bad experience and so on.

I have said this previously but I've lost 40 odd fish since my first 100 jades thanks to the guru... As if I'm going to kill and eat 300gram fish ffs.....

The way I see it, and I guess it's the way I've always seen it, is that my job is to simplify aquaponics to the level where everyone can do it. We deal with many people that have little to no idea about aquaponics and the golden rules that we give to people with new systems allow people with little to no idea, to grow fish and veggies out with few if any problems. And ther have been many hundreds of them.


I'm sure I've posted them up before, don;t have them here, but I should probably post them up again, because they have been shown to work pretty much 100% of the time.. Generally if people follow the simple rules, they re sucesfull..

....

Post them again because I cant remember them.

Mind you I'll break them almost every time I'm sure.

With you EB.

I am sure that if you keep a good eye on things and have systems in place, you can push the limits of fish per L.

For me, I jumped into AP to get some clean vegies, without heaps of fertiliser, without putting water back into the water table, without hard labour of pulling out weeds, replacing dirt, mulching.....

For now I have had a non stop supply of lettuce for about 6 weeks, and plenty more to get a family of 5 through spring. The snow peas are sweet (6 per day), the strawberries have started to flower, and the tomatoes are coming on well.

I still have to go to the stupermarket to supply most of the food, but come xmas, I should be starting to eat SP. 15 supplied by fishman Sept last year. No deaths!!! One top of IBC as GB.

Hey, I'm not getting massive amounts of vegies or fruit, but a little bit here and there, and I'm learning about stocking levels in the GB as well as the FT. The water is as clear as spring water, and even smells clean.

Remember why we get into this. Its a hobby. Its meant to be a bit of an escape for most us. If you live on the edge, sometimes you fall off.

This is the simple golden rules section of our operating instructions. The original version used to come as a laminated sheet, but nowadays it's been changed a bit and is just part of a more expansive system operating manual.

its simple once you get the right info, I find the problem is usually the bugs I wouldn't buy anything of MH ever again. Scrupals he has got non just look at his prices, I suppose seeing he doesn't manufacture anything himself he has to put a big mark up on things but god even the courses I could fly to byap and do a simular course no doubt for 1/8th of the price.

MH does manufacture his fibreglass kits Wildfire.... and other bits and pieces...

When did he start manufacturing them again? Last time I heard he made the mould and got it outsourced.

Could be Wildfire... I know he did manufacture offsite for a while... (something to do with the EPA I heard)