Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Sorry if this has been posted before, if so please delete the thread.

I read this article a few months ago and found it very interesting. The jist i got was that so far there has yet to be a profitable commercial system that didnt rely on selling their ideas and process's etc. And after reading it i realised that Nate storey and bright agrotech are probably much the same and it changed my view of them, they are constantly spruking their zip grow towers and they have even now taken the "diagnosing deficiencies" PDF off as free and are trying to charge $1 for it.

It baffles me that hyrdoponics can be profitable and aquaponics cant, you would think aquaponics would be cheaper seeing you get "free" nutrients from the fish. But obviously that doesnt outway the extra pumping costs etc.

Seeing my work runs a perfectly profitable RAS with 50kg of food going into it everyday and currently 120,000 litres of waste overflow water thats about 20mg/l nitrates and we have plenty of spare land at work i told my boss this article was a good reason for him to let me set up aquaponics running off the waste water. But being a big company worth many millions and the risks they would perceive with me even touching their waste water and not returning it i doubt i could convince them it would be worth it unless they could put some sort of positive media release spin on it.

I doubt photobucket is the best way to share it but its what i have and can think of.
If your screen isnt big enough to read the text you can click on the image to be taken to the photobucket page and then hover on the pic and click the zoom icon top right.
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Interesting? Yes but look at who they interviewed!
Aquavita who is indoors under T5's trying to grow Tilapia in cold weather Ny and sell for a premium price. The right consultant could have told them that wasnt going to work before they invested and lost so much money. The same goes for sweet water who was mentioned in the article. Now they've opened a consultancy buisness based on their experience of failure? I would not want to be his guine pig... How about you?

I am profitable right now on strictly fish and vegetables and nearly doubled my previous years salary working at one of the largest aquaculture (and now ap)firms in the world.

It works and I'll say it over and over again because I have walked the walk.

The future growth of commercial AP is going to depend on good designs, good marketing and realistic operators/investors. The problem is that the majority of people making money in AP are doing so by scaling up backyard designs and selling them as commercial designs, hoping for the best without having the experience to bring the designs and/or clients to fruition. Why don't we have hundreds of successful aquaponic farmers all over the US and Oz right now? Thousands of people per year are taking expensive training courses... Where are all the success stories? It's not because the tech doesn't work, Rakocy proved that in the 80's! It's because of miss information, "new untested designs" being sold before they have any longterm production data and people that sell themselves as experts in the field when they are not.

Aquaculture went through the same hurdles and if you look right now at all of the facilities that have opened in the last 20 years I'll bet there are less than 5% still in operation. The industry has a history of sheisters over promising and under delivering. Still, some businesses were able to see through the BS and find their way to a profitable business.

Ap is going through the EXACT same thing right now. It's very "sexy" and that leads to people jumping on board without giving the designs and buisness economics a through look. It's just so cool!

Yep.


Yep.


Yep.


Hydroponics went through the same growth cycle.


Eight years ago some one tried to con me out of our money for a "commercial" system. It was that experience that has framed my approach. Back then I could see the science was there to demonstrate that the idea worked but I could quickly see that the engineering work hadn't been done to take the science to the next level.

The other reason why AP hasn't taken off is scale. Eliminating hydroponics fertilisers is a very small saving and is not enough to overcome the problems of scale in systems that are less than 1 hectare. I've said this elsewhere but pump to run a 1ha system $32,000. Pump to run a 1ha system $17,000. Cost per m2 to supply a greenhouse is double at 2000m2 versus 10,000m2. At every level, for every component, for every input scale works against you if you try and build a commercial system that is smaller than 1ha (in the Australian context, likely to be different in other markets but not in Europe where the scale required is more like 2ha).

Personally I believe that the reason that Ryan is making money is not just because he really knows what he is doing when it comes to growing fish and plants but also because he has the skills to successfully market his produce for the premium that is required to make a small system work.