Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

That's what I thought would probably have been the case Ryan....

I was more than a little surprised that TCL seemed to brush the matter off so lightly... or appeared either so uneducated... or unconcerned...

I'm not surprised that so many people just aren't aware of the requirements... and I'm certainly not at all surprised that there's more than a handful of "bugger the government"... "aint gunna tell me what to do" types.....

The concern is.. the first case of food poisoning... especially if fatal.... that can be traced back to an aquaponics facility/operation...

Will not only see most of them shut down overnight... most for good... but immediate legislation and strict licencing implementations....

I'm frankly just stunned that those that seem to be venturing into the commercial aquaponics world... just don't adopt "best practice"... as part of their initial business plan...

But I've voiced such concerns on the matter....to deaf ears... and feeble egos.. on other avenues...

Hay Rupe it isn't so much that I'm unconcerned as that since I am not selling processed fish or ANY other processed stuff (because I do not have the facilities to process anything in the first place) I have not taken those steps. I mean what is the point of setting up cold chain monitoring if I can't afford to build a commercial kitchen facility at the farm to produce anything that would require cold chain monitoring? I'm only selling live fish, I don't have any contracts that want dead whole fish at this point. Most of the produce and plant sales are Live plants or just pick and bag produce that doesn't require refrigeration to keep it from spoiling only cooling off to preserve quality/sales. I really don't want to have to start spending lots of money on inspections, certifications and testing to do with processing, cold chain, and ice until I'm actually going to be able to start making use of it.

You can bet that if I do acquire some means to process anything I'll be complying with the regulations. I haven't been putting too much time into researching them lately since many of them do keep changing. Heck 3 years ago the state knew nothing about aquaponics but now there is a web page about it on their site. GAP authorities can't seem to figure out if Aquaponics can even pass an audit since some will decide that since there are fish in the system that is an automatic fail while others see no problem as long as you are keeping warm blooded animal waste out of the system.

Live fish trade is fine.... whole on ice.... or processed.. is an entirely different matter....

Ryan should be made this site's honorary Aussie.

Ryan are you sure you aren't an Aussie because you seem so sensible!!

Sorry for the lack of posting lately as I've been dealing with several non ap related issues that have been very time consuming. Still moving forward... Actually transferring a few hundred pounds of koi from my holding system by the house down to the fish building today and working on my hatchery. The roof has dropped the temp 20 deg in the fish building... Loving it!

I have a couple more recent pics I'll post up in a bit.

Hi Ryan,
What sort of roof material did you use for the fish room? We painted our barn roof with the white potable water compliant elastometric back in April/May and the temperature under that roof has dropped dramatically. Used to be dark green and when you walked out into the barn you could feel the radiant heat coming from the roof but now walking into the shade of that roof brings considerably more relief from the heat.

Anyway, I'm doing a short trial rental of a little Refrigerated utility trailer so if you or anyone you know needs to have small scale refrigerated deliveries done, I'm interested in picking up whatever work I can do.

And I forgot to say thanks Duckie! I'll take it

TC- It's thick gauge galvanized

Here are a few recent pictures from the farm...I should have pics of the full ap system in 2-3 weeks (backorders suck) when the build is complete and some other commitments are fulfilled!

We have been getting bad storms like this just about every afternoon:


My old boss sent me a pic of the dragon fruit flowering in the raft system! From cutting to fruiting in a raft, love it!



Sophisticated finishing tool:


Pineapple in flower:


Goats, Goat butter and buttermilk!



Soap/lotion making ingredients:


Baby Koi!




Eating good!


Our first apples

What variety of apples are you growing? I've always been reluctant to plant apples since I don't know if we will consistently get enough chill hours to actually get apples regularly.

Perhaps some people shouldn't post toe pics...

Reaches back to the interesting discussion about evolution that became a bit overheated. My question; Is Ryan the missing link we were looking for all these decades?

Prehensile toes?

My toes arent looking so bad now are they guys

That's his hand in the thong..... must be those discussed... prehensile eyes...

Really?