Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

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I think it was on SBS, that I stumbled on a chap investigating seafood sustainability ..
He showed the production of Vanami. (????) prawns in Thailand and compared them to sustainable Prawns from Australia..

He then showed how the Thai. prawns were fed.. and how that feed was made from the commercial rape of Thai waters, catching 100% of all they trawled up, and made into "fish meal" that was then made into fish and prawn food...

I was disgusted by the decimation of the Thai seabed, and vowed NEVER to eat Vanami prawns, because they were produced at the cost of the marine environment..

Sadly, I then started to think about the affordable AP food that came from Big Nutrition. In Brisbane..

There on the sack.... " Product of Thailand "

It is likely that this food has been made using the same fish meal as that produced following the bottom trawling of everything from the coast of Thailand..

Even the Thai factory owner declared... "we now get a tiny fraction of what we got 20 years ago.."

The comment was made to me, that most commercial farms were using this same product as i just purchased.. and so this is saying that many Australian growers are producing, unsustainably at the expense of the Thailand Environment...

Whilst most concerned for what I am now feeding my SP...... I WON'T be throwing this lot out, but will be seeking a sustainable food for the future..

What do we know of other producers..
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What has always bugged me is that trawlers over here must throw by catch back into the ocean (vast majority dead).
The trawlers should be required to bring it ashore and use it for fishmeal so that the carnage isn't in vain.

+ 10000000000000000. To that... what is the point of wasting all that bicatch...

THEY... should be required to more quickly sort the BiCatch to release the living and keep the dead for sale to a processing facility for sustainable fish food..
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I use feed from Ridley, made in Oz. http://www.ridley.com.au/Aquafeed.aspx

Yes it was Matthew on SBS see: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=23365&hilit=label#p481558

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"What's the catch " with Mathew Evans. THURSDAY 2030>2130

Seriously... see If you can find it on iView or whatever for SBS..

Ridley... Thanks Gordon... Whatever the cost - we cannot feed our faces at the expense of the total decimation of every creature off the Thailand coast...

THANKS GG for those links... everyone should see and understand what that story was saying about our food preferences..
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http://www.csfproteins.com.au/Businesse ... lleri.aspx

While I think measure should be taken to reduce bycatch when it is thrown over board dead it is not necessarily waste. All those dead fish will be eaten and therefore not wasted.

The problem is not what is done with fish pulled from the sea by rather what fish are pulled from the sea. Not just species but age and gender.

This is one of the reasons that orange roughy should be boycotted (in my opinion). Orange roughy form schools to breed. Fishing trawlers find these schools with echo location and then catch them. Generally there is almost no bycatch but generally there are no breeding age orange roughy left in the area either.

Catching tonnes of unwanted fish might not be good but there are worse things. The problem in Thailand that was referred to above is not the amount or what that is extracted but that the extraction rate is so far above the replacement rate. Mind you its not hard to have the extraction rate higher than the replacement rate when the actual means of extraction trashes an ecosystems ability to recover.

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Skretting promote that there material is sustainable and that they are working hard to reduce the quantity of fish meal in there products even further.

While all marketting should be taken with a grain of salt I believe them because they are motivated by self interest. The only way they can expand and sustain their sales is by spreading smaller and smaller amounts of fish meal amongst larger and larger quantities of fish food.

You can get skretting and ridley stuff down here in Vic relatively easily but I'm not sure where you would get them from in Sydney.

If you order enough you can buy direct but that is in the order of hundreds of kgs.

Not true, I bought a 20kg bag of 2mm fry start pellets direct from Ridley.

This is Ridleys site https://www.primo.net.au on the left you will see Ridley Aquafeed which will let you order. You have to register with a email and pass word. Give Jason a call and he is good to help you. Freight would be the main cost so better if you can buy several bags. I normally by one 20 kg bag and do pick up as it is close.

Sorry I don't get it.
By using imported fish meal that's more sustainable ??

It's law that bicatch and is thrown back. Same goes with crays, crabs etc etc, they can't even keep them for themselves.

no aquafeed is sustainable, all fishmeal for skretting and ridley comes from overseas from places like chile where they rape the ocean just as bad.

They had a chance to do something sustainable here in australia with the super trawler, i believe it was catching small fish for potential fish meal production and it was driven away by green groups and angry recreational fishermen.

Reducing the amount of food you buy helps wth sustainability- use your kitchen scraps to feed worms, and feed them to the fish. I've just fed a few to the Murray Cod, they love 'em. No doubt they get the ocassional worm coming down the GB drains too.