Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I'm really not that into doing "just" Raft aquaponics with separate filtration. Do I think it can be done, well Look at Ryan Chatterson's stuff, obviously he is doing it very well. I don't know how exactly he gets such beautiful results though.

As for ducks, I do not recommend running ducks in an aquaponics system that you harvest any produce out of for sale, and especially not with any produce that might be eaten RAW. Ducks are warm blooded animals and can carry salmonella and e. coli and my opinion is that I really don't want them pooping in my salad and I prefer all warm blooded manure to be properly composted before use on my salad.

My experience with our Muscovy ducks is that they don't actually provide as much nutrients as you might think and bio-filteration isn't as big a deal in the duck a ponics system, However, there does tend to be a very large amount of sand, sediment, leaves and feathers that get into their system so solids filtration design is a high priority for their system. We are currently growing mostly bananas and duckweed in their system.

Oh I was up once an hour last night. At least once the baby is here, I'll know the sleeplessness is to take care of him and not just my body playing tricks.

This morning I guess the baby didn't want to switch sides so when I rolled over I think he wedged his feet against my spine to keep from swinging over to my right side, I had to get up because I got all light headed when he was pressing on the blood vessels. He seems to like stretching his legs out so I'm spending most of my time with his back hard against my left side and a foot or two sticking out on my right side.

Yeah lots of fun. Fortunately I'm a heavy sleeper so these shenanigans don't tend to bother me.

Our next is due in June and Sarah is already going to the loo every time I turn around.

Stuart, just think of all the human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) that you could be 'harvesting' for later injection into Silver Perch for breeding purposes. Apparently there is enough hCG in a pregnant woman's average toilet trip to induce about three Silver Perch.
Sorry, TCLynx, but I don't know which of your local fish species your own product may work with.

I'll ask Sarah to start saving hers for the cause.

I figure it is easy enough to go get fingerlings from the fish farm only a half hour from here that I'm not worried about trying to breed my own stock.

If I had a larger natural pond I probably wouldn't need to do much beyond provide some appropriate habitat for the catfish or bluegill to breed on their own anyway. It is more to do with space, time and habitat for these fish.
Catfish take several years to mature to breeding age. Bluegill are known to be able to over breed and over populate if not controlled but I don't know how easy it would be to get them to do it in tank culture, Haven't really studied or tried to do it.

Ya need to close the loop man. You can't do that unless you use your own pee and ....


Is there a tree huggin hippy emoticon?

LOL, don't ya know you need to use about 1/2 your pee to keep the compost cooking really HOT.
And then the other 1/2 you could save to simply use as the best darn liquid fertilizer for the soil gardens.

Yes but what about the ...

... goes in the Humanure compost pile and you have to make sure enough Pee is also going into that compost pile to make sure it gets good and HOT. It is the most effective way to deal with any possible pathogens and avoid polluting the water supplies with our own ...

Humus aside the composting systems I've looked at all separated the wee out. They didn't want/need the nitrogen boost rather extra carbon is the form of straw or sawdust was added which also reduced the density of the mass allowing more air to get in.

Read the Humanure Handbook. http://weblife.org/humanure/default.html

Most of the expensive "composting toilet systems" don't really compost but let the contents moulder at a lower temperature and dehydrate and really don't help with nutrient cycling or pathogen reduction and often don't do all that good a job dealing with smell either.

Humanure composting can be done for very cheap and the wee is actually an integral component in making sure the compost gets good and hot. Plenty of straw and sawdust and other carbon material is added to humanure compost to provide enough air entrapment and smell covering carbon to make sure a nice hot compost happens even with the heavy liquid/nitrogen load.

I think i've read it but its been awhile.

We did a series of camp site toilets where the waste was depostited into blue barrels with some extra plumbing. Barrels were taken away when full, placed in a hot house and their plumbing connected. Bassically drainage system to deal with leachate and aeration system to drive composting. After a year it was all fully composted.

Would soldier [privy] flies speed this up?