Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Well worth a read if you haven't seen it already..

http://www.aquaponicsjournal.com/articleFutureAquaFarms.htm

Haven't they gone belly up.

Good on them for trying and all but...

The initial investment was far too high. ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND for two greenhouses. Oh come on!

$3 per sq ft per month to break even..... Who did the math!

I'd run screaming from anything they ever designed.

I was going to ask if they'd gone belly up too, but I couldn't verify that (I remember something from the guy about the business folding). I tried Googling for it but couldn't find anything definite, all the press releases end around 2003.

I think it would be very interesting to search for aquaculture bankruptcies and analyze why such ventures fail - more useful than rah rah stories about 21st century super-Canadians.

The only successful farms I have heard of were ones where the people didn't owe any money from the beginning, either because they were rich executives who bought a farm outright or were frugal and smart and patient and paid cash for a good piece of land that would work as a farm (local example: http://www.localharvest.org/farms/M5520 ).

i got the impression that the $100,000 was just for the first greenhouse (plus initial operating expences). being that those are canadian dollars, it would be around $80,000 us.

not all that high for a large scale operation. land, building, utilities, employee salarys, etc add up. i wouldn't want to even think about something of that scale without at least that much cash.

Dude! If you ever go big you got to see some of my plans etc and fly me over to help build and save you a fortune. You do the roof hehe.

Coolstore you need. Local processors. Local greengrocers. Pick and pack - on the truck and off to market - gone - that is how we do it here.

Early and larger systems have so much unneccessary smeg. You know a good design makes a world of difference.

If folk can't make a living off dual income streams equivalent to related industry... it's the math at the start is the problem.

Dave used a magic word and some good observations on business - patience. Get in over your head and the love is gone, when the love is gone the business suffers.

Sketchup is an incredible tool for moving system parts about and maximising light and canopy exposure. It's saved me miles of plumbing and added a whole new perspective on how to make a system. But it can't make a big enough picture before my computer starts lagging...

Simplicity seems always to be the winner in scaling up. As I've heard you say AF -You want a hydro system, a fish tank, and connections.

All this fish farming smeg is unbelievable. The filter is the plant beds so why buy filters. The pump is the aeration so why buy aeration. Gravity is return so no need for more than one pump per module. The greenhouse is the insulation saving on heating. Symbiotic system parts wherever possible.

Maybe I was a bit harsh looks like they worked real hard and at least they were willing to lay it on the line.

Keeping within financial reality in business is crucial. There is of course a stepping off point.

Just not straight in the deep end.

I don't know if any aquaponics startups would ever use venture capital-type financing, but I've read in the computer software business world that it is a deal with the devil. You have an idea, pitch it, someone with money finances it, you sacrifice a real life to work your butt off getting it off the ground and working, then you get pushed out and can't do anything about it because you don't own it.

One thing the Speraneos alwas said is that if they had had lots of money to throw at setting their systems up, they would never have got to where they are, and would never have been successful...

Why is it that people always try to over engineer things, personally when you try and seperate the plants from the fish too much, looking at them as such seperate entities, then you begin to miss the big picture..

This was one problem I had with some of the comments in the article by Wilson Lennard. He stated that aquaponics wouldn't really be successfull large scale because of the amount of growbeds required to filter the water for the fish. Why is this a problem? Isn't this looking at the situation purely from an aquaculture point of view.. So far as I can see this isn't a problem, but a bonus because it means you can grow more plants.

Aquaponics is 'aquaponics'...! It's not just aquaculture and hydroponics happening at the same time in the same place, and if you try and look at it from an aquaculturalist point of view, or a hydroponics grower point of view, you will see percieved problems compared with what they know and are used to. This is because your not looking at things as a whole, as aquaponics....

Agreed EB,

It seems there is a major focus on the fish side of it, but in a decent sized backyard system, (hopefully mine) will produce way more vegies than fish. The only negative I can see with having large amounts of growbeds in order to filter the fish water, is the cost of establishing them-even if you look at the plants as a by-product- they are a pretty important by product I reckon.

Well spoken all.

Aquaponics is basically farming ie: producing food.

This is something for farmers, land, plant and stock lovers - not venture capitalists. Venture Capital only want to see a profit so you'll be overstocked overstressed and underpaid.

I'd like to see lots of sole owner small business operators out there all gathering experience and ideas together like we do here.

The question of Aquaponics is a personal one as well. Joyce would like to provide for herself and clientele.

I'd like to show industry a few tricks, then build my own oasis.

Joel is going to write a dozen books then do the talkshow circuit

Having an end in mind can then be broken down into the components of your target, but KISS!

Making Aquaponics a business you should see profit on paper long before a post ever goes in the ground.

Profit isn't marginal, that's bad investment.

Profit means getting your money back AND making a living.

I'm putting figures together for a 20 x 50 metre (1/4 acre) greenhouse.
These will include initial costs, materials, system specs, sketches, fish weights, water volumes, planting ratios, running costs and more.

When I think I know what it can produce I'll make a thread on it.

Some of the juicier stats I might keep for forum pm's

Well that's two winks, nudge nudge, and I'm off.

The biggest problem here AA, and i would suspect in any part of Australia within a cooee of a capital city, is the high price of that 1/4 acre. Also, for calculations, I reckon it would have to be the biggest variable.If you could buy half an acre and live on site, then it changes the equation I suppose. I have 1400 m2 here 10 minutes to the city that I bought before prices went silly. Maybe I should contemplate knocking the house over and sleeping with the fish!! But they will only let you build on 50% of the land... Ah, dream big, build little: KISS

True.

But half an acre to support a farmer, worker, and family. That's a lot better than 200 or 2000 or....

As a business, I'd definately be heading for the countryside. And leasing is an option. You guys with your more land per capita. Need more bloody water pipes!

Need to see the figures 1/4 acre might be too big or too small. Getting there... need lots of quotes.

I agree. Iwould love to live in the country, am a country boy at heart. just waiting for my wife to stop wanting more kids, finish her nursing degree and get a job somewhere within half a day of the city, so I can puddle around with something without having to make an money, jsu lie aqua, where if you had a big system in your back yard, you're sorted. Sorry about the drivel, I've not had enough sleep

Thats the beauty of BACKYARD aqua, some of us were lucky enough to be able to sneak up on the great australian deam of a 1/4 acre block just before the prices went nuts. and the back yards became courtyards. still you don't have to go bush to get it........sunbury (melb) is about the same 27 min train ride to the city because its V/line express as where i am, and 1/4 and 1/2 acre blocks + houses are reasonably priced

To survive in an aquaponics business, it's far more important to know about business than it is to know about aquaponics.....and that's why aquaponics (like any other alternative farming venture) will produce its fair share of financial disasters.

Most small business start off with someone who is doing a particular thing as a hobby, or even working for someone else, and they get to thinking that, because they can perform the work associated with the business that they can run a business. The fact that 80% of all small businesses cease to trade within 5 years is evidence that this way of going about things is flawed.

There are far better computer builders and software writers around than Bill Gates (like Steve Jobs of Apple) but none of them is a better business person.

It's a simple fact that, of all of the farming ideas that have sprung during the past 100 years, the only ones that have made money over the long term are the same ones that always made money......grain, wool, beef.

I've seen every alternative farming idea fall squarely on its backside..... angora goats, ostriches, alpacas, jojoba and a thousand others. The only people who ever made money out of all of these things were businesspeople who floated the ideas and then jumped out of them before the shit hit the fan.

Every business needs three areas of expertise to survive......marketing, operations and finance. There are just five ways to grow any business and four of them are about marketing - the least understood of the three areas of expertise.

Knowing about aquaponics is operations - that's the easy part.

All of the knowledge that is needed to run an aquaponics system has been around for decades. Everything that we're doing now has already been covered in huge detail by the likes of Todd and McLarney and the New Alchemists at least 30 years ago.

People will make money out of aquaponics but they'll be businesspeople rather than people who are interested in fish. That's not to suggest that you can't be both but, if it's one or the other, my money is on the businessperson.

I agree with those who advocate starting small. If you can't run a backyard fish farm, you can't run a big one......and if you can't run a small business, you certainly can't run a big one.

My advice would be to have fun while we learn to put clean, fresh food on the table and to enjoy the fellowship to be found in a group like this.

That's not to say that there's not a bit of money to be made selling fish, systems, courses, books or DVD's - but don't give up your day job if you haven't mastered the basics of business.

If you doubt what I say, send me your business plan and I'll show you where the holes are.