Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello everybody there!


Saying that I’m a complete newbie not only in Aquaphonics but almost also in gardening or agriculture isn’t far to be true. I live in a region where agriculture has been the biggest economic activity for hundreds of years and almost still is, so i’m familiarized with it. My grandfather was a farmer for all of his life working for big landowners but he had a small piece of land where he grew all the vegetables he could (in fact he was a quasi-vegeterian) even till the day he died at 90 a few years ago, and me, as a child and adolescent observed and helped him many times but never being as interested as to learn his vast knowledge, thing that now I’m so sorry about.

But my life went on another direction, my father started a bussines manufacturing sofas (furniture was quite a strong and traditional sector here too) and when I finished my studies I joined him. I’ve been in the furniture bussines for, well, I can’t even remember the first time I went to our factory because for me it has always been there and at a very young age I began helping in what I could, but “legally” I’ve been on furniture bussiness first as an employee and then as the main manager for 12 or 15 years. Now I’m 36.

As you all may know in 2007 things began going wrong in economy and specially for southern european countries as Spain. So wrong that at the end of 2011 we had to close our bussiness and 15 people counting me found ourselves without work. And at that point is where my interest with agriculture started.

Next to our warehouse there’s a portion of land where my grandfather planted some fruit trees as orange trees, a fig tree, a grenate tree, two plum trees and some more and when my father retired last year he started planting some more trees and some vegetables as pumkins, aubergines, beans, tomatos, green peppers, strawberries, etc. Everything to consume at home. And as I had nothing to do I began helping him digging, trimming the trees, and even building a small greenhouse for strawberries to avoid birds eating them. Even sometimes that kind of work has been hard, I’ve enjoyed a lot the fact of being outdoors, breathing fresh air and realising that I was eating our own grown completely organic food.

Since that time I started to think in what could I do for living in relation to my new “hobby” and I thought a lot of times if there was any system that allowed me to grow some kind of vegetable indoors (now that I have an empty big warehouse), if possible offseason vegetables to be able to sell it at a reasonable price for the fact that it’s offseason and, maybe more important, organic non chemical fertilized or pesticide-insecticide use.

And the magic of internet and its capacity of connecting people all around the world brought me to Aquaponics!

A couple of weeks ago I was watching videos on how to do an organic composter and I “accidentally” watched the Will Allen’s Growing Power video, and it linked to many other videos of people that even at home were growing veggies and, the most surprising thing, fish! Of course it inmediately caught my attention and I started reading and visiting webs with the difficulty of being the 99.99% of the info in english. I can’t believe that nobody here in Spain is doing it. Of course I suppose that there must be a bunch of people but the information and the experience or what you find in internet in spanish is almost 0 compared to what you can find in english.

As in any other subject that one starts, one wants to collect and read as many as one can but there’s so much info that you want to assimilate in a short time and from so many fonts that you don’t know their reliability that one has to be patient and prudent with making plans specially if you want to go commercial.

According to this I think the best and most reliable source of information I’ve found is BWAP and its forum mostly because you are so many users experimenting and sharing your knowledge that it’s almost impossibe that someone can try to sell you a supposed extraordinary system without the other users anlizing and critisizing it.

I’ve read the thread and the thoughts of many of you about the feasebility of an AP commercial system. Ones say yes, others say no but the truth is that I still haven’t found anybody that can ensure he is doing it for a living and even if I did, first thing for me would be to start doing it myself at a small scale that is what I plan to do for now.

Here in Spain, there is an still growing market for vegetal organic products and people is starting to worry about what they eat and I find this is a great opportunity (even more if you add the organic fish production). For now I’ll continue reading and collecting info and I’ll start an IBC simple system, so I think I will be visiting you often with a lot of questions and if I finally don’t start an aquaponic based bussiness at least I expect to grow food and fish for my own!

Welcome Carlos!

Thank you Dave!

Welcome Carlos, we have a few members here from spain.

Click on this link to find a discussion that may point you in the right direction and some members in your area.

viewtopic.php?t=12090

Hola Carlos, Bienvenidos y buena suerte!!

Welcome Carlos. Have you read the IBC of aquaponics?. Can't wait to see your system.

Hi, yes I have. I'm still trying to find one or two second hand IBCs for my first attempt, which will be a simple system as in your guide, and I also have to find out which species of fish I can breed here with our range of temperatures.

My idea is to try commercial but I think it will take me almost a year with the tryout system to set it up and be sure that everything works and then expanding to a bigger system in several phases.

I'm going little by little and I've still a lot to read in the forum. For now I only have the place, a 30mx25m warehouse. As soon as I have something done I'll post some pics.

I've started a thread in the Members systems section:

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=14446

I've posted some questions and hope to get some answers there since I'm a bit messed up now.

Hi Carlos.
I have a few years older than you but my story is similar to yours.
My father had a shirt factory and the crisis that forced him to close back to the mid-eighties!
Luckily I, stubborn, I completed my studies at the university and I found a good job that I still have!
I've also started from a article about Will Allen
http://iononperdonoetocco.wordpress.com ... o-collega/

Even here in Italy very few know the aquaponics and I'm "experimenting" for about a year with mixed results.

In my opinion, turn the aquaponic hobby into a job faces two major problems:
- on the one hand the market, we need to focus on the sale to the final consumer who is able to appreciate the quality and willing to pay an appropriate price
- on the other hand there is a legal problem: the rules of the European Union prevents call "Organic" a product grown without soil, such as vegetables grown in aquaponics
I stay tuned on your posts :-)
Cirano

Welcome to Aquaponics, the hobby that you can spend unlimited time and money, and actually enjoy it!!

Sorry to say this, but the European Union have no clue what they are doing there. Possibly it is going to end in near future, considering all the issues there.

I assume you have to prove that there is not antibiotics, hormones, and chemicals in the fish food first.

By the way, price of fruits and vegetables are very reasonable there compare to US. I know first hand information about Germany, and England. Specially in England in the market, I saw much fresher produce much cheaper than US. And all the good stuff were from Spain and Israel.

Same "soil" definition exists in "organic" certification laws here in Australia...

Frankly though... I don't see any advantage in trying to obtain an "organic" certification... unless you can definitely achieve a "premium" price on that basis...

If they can not achieve the Organic certification, then they will not be able to make any sizable profit to maintain. The produce is very cheap there.

To be commercially profitable.. they'll probably require the scale and volume that requires wholesale pricing regardless...

If the intention is direct marketing.. for premium price... then their commercial viability will be limited by the scale of operation that can be achieved by that model with one or two operators...

Ok, some points on this:

First, my main product in case to finally go commercial is the fish. Each country or region is a different case and here we have a great climate for soil based agriculture and a lot of traditional farmers to compete with.
Of course we also have a big fishing industry but we all know what is happening with fish demand and the fish disposal on the seas and aquaculture here is still very unknown, not to say aquaponics. I have only been able to find one pure aquaculture bussines here in Valencia and they breed eels.
I've been talking to the only fish farmer breeding tilapia here in Spain and they are only three people. I don't know how much they are stocking but accordind to what he said they are doing fine. They sell to restaurants, schools, hotels, and local fish markets.

There's some kind of movement starting here in Spain which I think maybe is already set in other countries, called "proximity markets". You can hear it on Tv programs about agriculture or ecology, webs, and even the news. Farmers, sindicates or cooperatives are trying to spread the fact that the produce that big supermarkets have in their shelves comes from foreign countries meanwhile farmers here have to export that same produce to "survive". If a farmer wants to sell his produce to this big organisations has to lower his price at the point that it is not worth to produce anything. So this kind of markets are being set in towns and cities and only local produce can be sold there, in fact you usually know the farmer. As the farmer say the consumer can get a better price than going to the supermarket and the farmer also sells at a higher price. Of course you can't find fish at any of these markets which is an oppotrunity.

Besides this, if you want to produce organic fish the European Union sets a limit in stocking density in RAS systems that makes impossible to obtain the certification and be commercially viable and that is a bit of a problem if you want to sell your fish at a premium price. But as you said this hopefully has to change. And yes, the EU has no clue in many many subjects.

As I'm only begining on this and I'm still with a first pilot system I really can't have a reliable sheet of costs and cant say if it will be viable for me. As I said I see an opportunity and a market niche here and the rough numbers I've done are not bad but I still have many things to study like which species of fish to breed according to our climate here and what vegetables/greens can I grow. For now I'm looking for one or two 4000-5000L FTs to start a slightly bigger system with maybe other fishes than tilapia.

Hello Carlos, I really like your engagement and your passion and follow carefully your efforts.
My advice is to start gradually (but I see you have a clear idea) progressively and build loyalty consumers more aware of your city.
Greetings!