Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Makes sense but what is the best way to break them outside of the AP system, I have seen tanks with large air pumps oxygenating the removed waste but that seems like a very inefficient way of doing it.

Right... mineralisation tanks would be a very fitting method of processing the solids. It's fairly common. Aeration systems for these applications do not require much energy when properly sized and designed. The excess effluent, over and above what is needed to sustain proper levels in the AP system can be used in all sorts of other ways, even sold I suppose.

Of all the design features of AP systems I have studied I honestly know very little about mineralization tanks, other then being a huge tank with a copious amount of air pimped through it is there anything else that makes it tick, large surface area media of some sort or is it pretty simple?

I'd suggest googling "wastewater mineralisation". You'll find heaps of good info. At it's core, it's a very simple process, but if you really want to "geek out" on the topic, you'll encounter no shortage of text on the subject.

Just a couple initial observations, given the volume of air I have seen pumped through some systems I would say they are very aerobic in design, while some I have been reading about are talking about anaerobic bacteria breaking down the waste? Are there totally opposite design approaches to this or am I missing something? I though anaerobic bacteria were a bad thing for AP systems due to the PH swings.

YABBIES!

Crayfish, Crawfish, Crawdads = Family Cambaridae

Yabby = Family Parastacidae

Technically there is a difference. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freshwater_yabby

Looks almost identical to the Trinity River Gray sub species, except the yabbies have slightly shorter claws and the grays often have a little more blue on the claws themselves. Our grays are tough customers, the larger ones would routinely tear skin even through my thick canvas gloves! By far the toughest variety of crawfish I ever dealt with.