Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Great Thread! Thank you.

Epic. Just an epic thread. Only sore spot for me was the GMO stuff.

Hi all, i would like some feed back on the subject of fish food contents....this might be opening a can of worms but i'm right at stage one with AP and im shocked to find GM fish food!! Has there been any studies done on the eating of fish fed with GM fish food?

There is also fish in the fish feed? Would this be sea fish? If so how can we be sure THAT fish is not contaminated with radiation or other pollutants that "could" make its way to our plate. After all we know how the corporate machine works hey

The feed that is in Hungary might be very different than other places, so check into the feed you are feeding your fish. Most of the crude protein comes from sea fish. The parts people don't want to eat. As far as radiation goes, there is nothing we can do about that. The reality is that there are BPAs just floating in the sea. We do what we can, but the toothpaste is already out of the tube, and there is no squeezing it back in. The trick is to keep calm and AP on.

Don't Panic!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR6wok7g7do

While caring about what we eat is important one of the biggest adverse health risks is stress so getting too worked up about it is kind of counter productive.

I really don't see where there's an issue with doing exactly what the OP has asked about. Can it be done? YES. Is it easy? Not at first, but it gets easier over time.

#1: It takes *time* as has been stated earlier - not just in growing/raising the food source for your fish, but also in the processing.

#2: It takes experimenting...fish are not mindless poop factories (Although some of us may believe that from time to time) they are actually quite finicky eaters for the most part. So even though you may have taken several hours to process a fish food you just *know* they'll love because it's perfectly balanced and healthy for them - they may think it sucks and not touch it after the first couple bites.

#3: It takes more time in research as well. You need to know a few things - like what makes your fish grow, what helps prevent disease, what strengthens their bones, what makes them colorful (If you're doing it for pretty fishies) and what makes them taste delicious! (If you're raising them to wind up on your plate)

However, note the one thing I did not mention - money. It does not take a ton of money to feed your fish, but it may take a bit to start, as you may very well be wasting $$$ spent on mixes that your fish don't appreciate. Which is why I strongly suggest having a small tank with a couple fish of the type you wish to raise and see how they respond to recipes until you find the magic mix to raise them from fingerlings to big daddys.

A quick search online will show you many recipes for creating your own fish food. A lot of them suggest using gelitin as the primary binding agent, although I think Agar-Agar powder is a bit better, although technically if you don't mind clouding up your water a bit during feed time, even that might not be necessary. I personally think eggs might make a perfect binding agent, especially if you do a low temp bake (200f for about 20 minutes). That being said, most of the ingredients that everyone agrees on are a mix of seafood (Fish, shellfish and shrimp (de-shelled) with some even suggesting fat trimmed beef heart, etc) and veggies (Such as yellow bell peppers, which have a good mix of Vitamin C and carotenoid, carrots, green beans, romaine lettuce, etc) and let's not forget the seaweed which is very nutritous.

Now, these things are not necessarily things you could grow on your own, although some you certainly could. However some things could be substituted to help your fish out, so I'm sure there are plenty of veggies that could be used to give crucial nutrients to our finned friends and worms are very high in protein, not to mention fish love them (Especially if you strip them of their poop, errm...excellent compost!).

Add to all of this the option of grinding up multi-vitamins into the mix to boost their nutrients and you can see that making the food can be inexpensive or rather pricey, depending on what all you add to the mix.

Now, will the food be suffient to raise your fish on solely? Yes, *if* you put the time and effort into learning what they need to grow strong and healthy. Note - not just what they need to grow...but what they need to grow strong and healthy.

So yes, you could realistically create a self-sufficient Aquaponics system, but logically, creating a self-sustaining one is nearly impossible. Simply speaking - nature is perfect, we aren't.

The only self sustaining system I've ever seen was done in South of Spain and it was an entire eco-system primarily for fish, but they could have easily grown crops on the highly nutrient-rich soils surrounding the area. Of course, that was also on several hundred acres of land and was practically a wildlife preserve and the water source was a river feeding the flood plain.

I hope this helps the OP get a better feel of the work cut out for them if they wish to follow this course of action, without raining on their parade by saying it cannot be done.

http://www.sonnysfishroom.com/?page_id=269 <-- Link to a gentleman who makes his own fish food for his personal aquarium. Just remember that what you feed them needs to be balanced to what they need, not just to what he feeds his non-edible fish. From there I'm sure there are several recipes you can find, including recipes for feeding specific fish, such as fish food for tilapia.

Cheers,
BinaryFu

I'm currently raising rabbits and dreaming up a two part waste management system. The rabbit waste will fall into a worm / compost bin. The worm bin drains into a duck weed tank.

I would add fresh grass clippings, garden waste, and dry leaves or straw to the worm bin to offer variety and water it down every few days to keep the ammonia from building up. The fresh water will wash ammonia and compost tea into the duck weed bin.

Would this turn all my rabbits waste into worms and duck weed that I can feed my fish?

Technically, yes, absolutely. However, I would look into the fine art of composting. There needs to be a good balance between your brown and green compost and most importantly, it should NEVER be WET. Barely moist is what you want to go for.

Your fine compost will drop naturally from the bottom if you set it up properly. As for positioning, I don't know how well bunnies would do sitting above the compost pile. Might be better to move their poop from the bottom of the cage over to your compost bin.

Hope this helps!

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Vermicomposting is a bit different than regular composting, you aren't trying to heat the stack up and it does need to be kept moist compared to a regular compost heap.

I can't speak to the nutritional value of the worms or duckweed Jason but at the least, you could feed them to your fish and they would make a good supplement. I know some people don't like feeding worms directly from the compost heap though and rinse them off first. Never worried about this with my fishing worms since no waste from warm blooded animals goes into my vermicompost so I tend to just knock the dirt off before feeding them to the Bluegill and Catfish. I have duckweed in my fish tank and can't tell if the Big Catfish in there eat it. The aquatic snails do so maybe the fish eat them . Tilapia will eat the duckweed I've heard.

Might as well mention, I sometimes feed chopped up hard boiled eggs or roast chicken (not fried it's too greezy) to the small Bluegill and then worms, pellets or crumble to make sure they're getting everything they need. I'm not worrying about the nutrition being perfect just trying to make use of things that might go to waste, like the chicken that no one wanted (It goes a long way for small Bluegill so I freeze most and store a small amount in the fridge for immediate use). They really like the worms, eggs and chicken but the pellets not so much. Still they will eat the pellets. As they get larger I'll probably go mostly to pellets and worms (I think these mess up the water a bit less)

Thank you everyone! I'll post what I come up with.

So, I'm aware that a mere mortal such as myself can not even hope to make a sufficient fish food, but I still don't want to be doing my part to deplete the oceans. Minerals and vitamins seem to be the main obstacle, so I'm thinking that if I grow lots of black soldier flies and meal worms or duck weed or something (I don't know.), then mix in a store bought fish vitamin mix, I can have fish food that stimulates growth and keeps the fish healthy. I'm planning to feed this to catfish and tilapia and I hope to entirely replace fish food. I have no experience (could you tell?) and I'm just trying to do my homework before I get started.

How do I make my crazy plan work?