Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

G'day Caribean-grower, here's a good link for info on snail farming....if you go to the publications button you can download a report they did on free range snail farming, which is quite good.

http://www.snailfarming.net/index.php

I've brought Sonya Begg's ebook...it's not too bad.

I'm planning to have a free range pen set up next to my aquaponic system....leafy veges will be grown and fed to the snails.

Hey Corny... I read through Sonyas book about snail farming, very interesting read.. So tell me, is free range snail farming a bit like just going out into the back yard on a damp night and collecting the snails? Perhaps you could offer it up as a service? People pay you maybe $5 to come around and collect all the snails from their yards, very eco friendly way to control the snails, and they are paying you to go and collect fish/human feed...

G'day Joel.....tis a good book (I remember showing someone it :p )

Free range snail farming is letting the snail do their own thing within a fenced area. What people have been using is shadecloth for the fence....you plant/grow a dense cover of plants/veges for the snails to hide under and eat.

The report is free to download and is an interesting read (on free range snail farming).

I don't have many snails here, so put a request out throgh my local freecycle sight...I offered five cents per snail. Have a few people who will collect them for me once I've set everything up (good pocket money for the kids!).

If I can start with approx 500 snails....and breed them then I should (fingers crossed) be looking at 5000 - 8000 snails to fatten up. From what I've read something like 60% + will not grow, or grow too slow, to be eaten so will go instead to the fish.

Anyways, that's the plan!

corny, I got 100 silver perch from Sunland Fish Hatchery today - $50 for 100. They're located at Boreen Point, just north of Noosa. Gwen, the owner, said she has organic fish food. She's bringing some over next week. It might be worth a call if you're still interested in buying some. The number is 0754853144.

Excellent - if someone calls - be sure to post the details.

Just need a tank to put them in vb

forest, visited Foley's today, quoted $580 for aquaplate tank (1800 *800mm), saw a tank being made your size - was that your's

I meant if anyone calls about the organic fish food - but fish are a fantastic price if one lives on North Coast. Too far for me I think.

Will check it out shortly, in need of a few more fish, it may be Grobest but will get the particulars (just need another tank to put them in)

plus extend the GH....and add on more GB space....plants

I am about to buy some more Jades from Aussiefish and some silvers from Sunland, does anyone in Brissie want to share?
Muzza

Have you been in touch with them yet Muzz, they are just up the road from me and I am looking at getting some from there after I have plumbed in a new fish tank.

I've still got a $200 credit with Seqfish - so need to use that up. I am so slow in getting my shit together it may be next season before I can buy my fingerlings

If they are like kids I know, they will turn up at your front door to sell the snails then dive over the back fence and collect them again to sell them back to you

Sounds like the when, as a 5 or 6 year old, my friends father paid us to pull out all the tiny deedling wattle plants from their 5 acre block. We were to be paid 1 cent per plant. We weren't satisfied with the 100 or so that we found on their property - so went next door where there were heaps. We pulled them out which greatly increased the amount of money we go. I'm sure that wasn't his father's intention

my dad paid me to pull sensitive weed out of the lawn in Cairns when I was a kid. The rate started at 5 cents a plant, but quickly dropped to 2 cents a plant after he had to give me the first $50

what's sensitive plant, is it one that has a sulk when you pull it out?