Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey, I was asked to come help on a new farm starting up and we came to the conclusion that we wanted to make this an aquaponics system. The owner has experience with hydroponics, but not AP so it has fallen to me to research, design, and build the upcoming system.

We will be starting with 60x40 greenhouse. I've heard DWC is the best method for commerical AP, how much space does this save? What is the cost of filtration? Any other benefits to this compared to media based? Also, if the bacteria are whats responsible for conversion of fish waste to worm food to provide nutrients for the plants, how is this made up for in a DWC setup?

I am also debating between one large rectangular tank or multiple round tanks.

Any leads on wholesale/commercial equipment would be greatly appreciated.

Let me know if you have any questions, thanks.

Generally, when it comes to commercial systems, those questions are met with "you need to be doing your own research." I would start with the book Recirculating Aquaculture by Timmons and Ebeling. Then expand your research from there.

Alright, just looking for some opinions, I am doing my own research, but I like to put out questions as I go, thanks. I am set on a media based system anyways.

So does anyone have an opinion on one large tank vs. multiple smaller tanks?

And again leads on equipment would be awsome.

In my opinion media beds are not your best bet for commercialization. You could incorporate media beds into the system in order to be capable of growing a more diverse list of crops. However, I believe the raft systems or DWC are the way to go and should be the prominent system that you are running when you look at it from a commercial angle.

One large tank or multiple smaller tanks.... Assuming your referring to the fish tanks, once again for a commercial system you ALWAYS want to have multiple tanks. You could very easily use one tank as well but it would add much more labor as you will have to grade the fish every time you go to harvest as you will want to have multiple size classes of fish. Where as if you have multiple tanks (four is a good number with six being better) you can stock each tank in stages with a different age fish. So when you harvest you harvest one full tank with no grading necessary.

Aquaponics has a ridiculous amount of variables at play and in a well engineered system there are slight aspects to it that can change how the system operates quite dramatically. It is good that your partner has hydroponic experience as that should be key in helping with the system design for the hydroponic portion. Hopefully you have someone with a decent aquaculture side as well.

Good Luck

This might point you in the right direction.

http://www.uvi.edu/files/documents/Rese ... System.pdf

But commerical AP is a whole other ballgame to putting some media beds in your backyard.

The concerns I have with the raft or DWC systems is that the nutrient levels won't be as high as a media based one and that it will not provide the plant support we require since we will be growing tomatoes and other tall plants.

As of now we do not have an aquaculture partner, and I definitely feel like were biting off more than we can chew for just the two of us so that helps push me to learn more and more, but we will definitely need to be able to call on some experienced help to perfect this thing when January rolls around.

Again, the book that I recommended in my first post will certainly help with the aquaculture side. As far as tomatoes in DWC, Ryan Chatterson has been very successful with it. His thread is Chatterson Farms Is Born. He tends to be tight lipped when it comes to the hows, but the end results speak for themselves.

There are a number of very serious issues with taking AP commercial with the first and foremost being consistency of result.

The combination of vegetative and animal production offers the possibility to lever profit from both sides but it come with increased complexity as these two, often competing, aspect of the operation produces predictably unpredictable performance. When you throw climatic variation and seasonality into the mix....I' sure you get the picture

The second is cost. Plant is exspensive and by combining standard equipment from the two distinct disciplines used to create an aquaponic system the best performance offered by both can be compromised. Thismakes each less productive than the stand alone installations and that will definitely stretch the breakeven/payback moment further into the future.

Markets are ruthless. Most AP Operators trying to go commercial see more value per unit marketing their produce as "better than the muck sold in supermarkets" but these extra dollars are not available unless you purposely exit the mass produced supply channels.

Under this business philosophy you spend all your time in marketing your produce at local farmers markets. Then as your production increases you become locked out of your chosen market venue because your production now exceeds local demand.

So, is commercial AP possible...I believe so, but you only if you acknowledge the truth about which market you wish to serve.

If you try to grow your business organically and methodically you can take advantage of high quality/nutritional expectations of the boutique buyer and this will probably work up to a certain size.

One way in which to service the premium market may be to explore franchise type setup where you have a series of smaller operations that grow to saturation locally and then stop expanding. You stop will be forced to stop expanding in depth but may possibly be able to increase in breadth.

If you market your own produce you would be wise to find other producers doing the AP in nearby towns and market their stuff. It's a win win if you grow different products.

The chain, as a whole, can continue to expand however into unserviced areas as a route to overall growth. This will take an extraordinary amount of collaboration and expertise but fortunately the people involved in AP are all fanatics so they come with a certain amount of genius. You just have to channel and control that genius by inspiring your partners to participate and adhere to your views in creating YOUR vision. They're an eclectic bunch so good luck with that...

Mass market channel approach is different you would need to go big and fast. To do this you need money and a fair bit of it and make no mistake this money or a substantial portion of it is play and at risk.

To go this way you focus where the money is and mine it with focused determination. I would choose a very small number of high value products with good market depth and find the cheapest way to grow a lot of it and sell it into conventional mass market system.

Normally this would require the big plant and big expense of a design that does that and only that. I think there is another way and that is modular.

If you design an AP system that is cheap, big, productive, easily reproducible and lends itself to being layed out like carpet tiles you may be on to a winner.

I think these goals are achievable but, your not gonna do it with blue barrels and siphons, even for the first approach, you will need something better.

If you can't grow your product and sell it at a profit...it's not a business it's a dud or a hobby so you should shut it off before you lose your house and end up divorced, pathetic and alone. 'Better luck next time" is a nice thought that will not help you deal with the carnage a failed business generates.

The operative word here is can. Ryan Chatterson I think demonstrates at least on the HP side that this does not have to be the case. Also all the work I have done has focused on using methods that don't compromise either form of production.

Growing organically may be the way you have to go but it is a hard road and many have gone before and failed because the work load relative to reward is so high for the first MANY years. If you can't get capital though you have to go this way or not try at all.

I've recently sketched out the basics for a 5tpa of fish 25tpa of veg system with the aim of including all capital costs. The system itself is about 50k but on top of that is at least another 70k of other stuff that has to be paid for. If I was to build two of them then the cost would be 100k plus the 70k of other stuff. Which very quickly begins to show you why scale is important. The problem is only 25t of veg is a lot to shift through farmers markets and restaurants. Not impossible but a lot.

If you already have a HP guy on board probably not so much of an issue but starting from scratch its a big order.



While it is a lot of money this approach is actually less risky. Economies of scale make the capital cost per unit of production much much less plus you can afford more redundancy, more control, more risk management, more expertise, etc., etc.

Either way you need access to a serious body of expertise and skills. If you go the small scale path you can't afford it and have to learn it your self because people won't give you the knowledge you need for free. If you go the large scale route you just* need to raise the capital.

*according to my Mum just is a four letter word.

i would definitely give Ryan applause for his efforts so far, his technical prowess appears excellent and is demonstrated by his many produce pictures. He has recently posted that he has reached break even point but doesn't really elaborate on how he measures this milestone. That's fair enough, if he's happy I happy for him.

But

You can tell from the tone of his system thread that marketing is becoming a problem. Moreover because he also spend much of his time doing consulting he will struggle to spend time on his core.

The Boutique approach requires a huge expenditure of effort that is outside of your core enterprise...growing plants and fish.

The mass market approach allows you to stick produce in a box and wave goodbye and that allows you, the producer, to focus on your specialty.

All this effort and capital cost is out there on a limb and at the end of the day you will be lucky if you bring in wages.

It will be well that you are doing what you love coz if you wanted to make lots of money you should have bought a McDonalds franchise.

I would still love to do AP commercially and dream about it all the time. I would love to be my own boss and spend all day building exclusively for me and mine but it has to do much better than working for wages.

I have some ideas that I think can bring increased profitability to AP but until I can construct something that demonstrates them as being superior they remain pipe dreams.

These ideas do not grow more of anything per square foot but rather maximize the amount of system you get for your buck and offer increased robustness and flexibility. It will also allow a modular growth approach to the mass market AP as a business

When/if I build this test system it will want to prove itself considerably better than what is available now or it will remain in the backyard.

This has turned out to be a very interesting thread. Stuart and Terry, I particularly enjoy reading your pearl's of wisdom and I offer my thanks to you both.

"I have some ideas that I think can bring increased profitability to AP but until I can construct something that demonstrates them as being superior they remain pipe dreams.

These ideas do not grow more of anything per square foot but rather maximize the amount of system you get for your buck and offer increased robustness and flexibility. It will also allow a modular growth approach to the mass market AP as a business "

Hey Terry, would like to hear about your ideas even if you think they are just pipe dreams.

Was it the "just" bit.

For a designer the detail in that document is oh so frustrating.

For example how much aeration did they supply to the raft tanks?

The document tells us the following:

-There are 6 raft tanks
-Each raft tank is 11.3m3
-Combined surface area of raft tanks is 214m2.
-Each raft tank has 24 airstones.
-The air stones in all the raft tanks were supplied by a 1hp (746w) blower.

So how much air was actually supplied? No idea.

Now if we had the pump curve of the blower and the pressure rating/friction loss of the airstone used or better
IF THEY HAD ACTUALLY MEASURED THE AMOUNT OF AIR FLOW ...

we would know how much aeration was actually being supplied.

Sigh.

Yeah that powerpoint is too vague... use this along with those pics for more clarification on the UVI system

https://srac.tamu.edu/index.cfm/getFact ... sheet/105/


And to answer that question I believe they have DO levels near 80% saturation (6-7mg/L).

It can be difficult finding out the REAL solid information on these commercial systems as everybody really is tight lipped. The publication I have a link to above is probably the most detailed you will get on a raft system design.

I have had to learn things my way and the hard way often times haha which in the moment of things I hate, it but after the fact I appreciate learning things that way.