Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

2.5ha? Ehh...where did that figure come from? The business plan I prepared was for an initial 1ha.

Possible? Yes. Probable, don't know. Its a hell of a lot of money and my background is not Hydro. Without doing the AP there are a bunch of supplementary funding streams that we wouldn't have access to which means that what I can offer people wouldn't have the same value.

Anyway its much easier (less initial capital required) to start with aquaculture and irrigate nutrient to field grown crops than the other way around.

Just curious Stuart but is the longer term plan to use the water to grow vegies as a sort of hydro and then use it to irrigate field crops?

BTW I disagree with EB on one point and that is volunteers. Either the take them on as a learning experience ie they are funded by the gov't but gain experience (this is their benefit) slightly twisted view of volunteering.
Or take on over pension age preferably separated or widowed; you may find they like to chat a bit but usually are reliable. You would still cop the insurance bill and a few fish and vegies thrown their way would not go astray.

Both. There is great scope to expand aquaculture in irrigation stores around Australia but farmers need specialized help setting up and running such operations.

Integrating AQ operations will mean we can produce more food from the same amount of water but in drought when water starts disappearing food production will stop.

With AP on the other hand it is possible to drought proof operations.

Good luck with your venture Stuart, thanks for sharing. I'm sure you will do well.
I'm assuming you will be breeding your own fish?
When does the project get under way?

You mentioned the conversations between you and previous potential investors with most discussions ending the same - "your plan sounds great but get it built and show me solid numbers and were in". Its along the same lines as what Mudeye is pointing out. Marketing a 'plan' isn't really much without proof of its success. Even if it is amazingly well thought out and designed.

Just to state the obvious - You have announced something that we have known for years - that you want to go commercial. Im unsure what has changed. Is this thread for your own warm fuzzy feelings or just to help out with the website or to hopefully gather investors? Im not wanting that to sound negative, I just think its worth clarifying so we can comment accordingly. Ill assume all of the above. I have no doubt you have a solid plan with potential profits for a 1ha system and I want you to succeed with this venture. I would trust your experience in designing a profitable system over any of the other 'marketing' type individuals that have failed in the past but your only one person.

A few questions run through my mind when I think about your project. I visualise the scale and 1ha is massive, Blue smart farms is .05ha and that place is enormous and it has a team of specialised employees. Inventers, employees, designers, communication experts, foreign marketing and big investors that have decades of experience in aquaculture, agriculture, marketing, civil works and supply. It took about 10 years to get that off the ground and millions in grants and huge mergers to make it work. UES, steelco, Coles etc etc just to name a few. Thats is for comparison sake but I think you are more looking at the Aquaculture side?

If its mainly AQ, well there is already so much of it out there. Lots of competition from vastly experienced people. People with degrees in aquaculture and many years experience on working farms. Is there need for another aquaculture facility? I see so many of them up for sale.

If its mainly AQ but then irrigation to a hydro component well you have me thinking back to Blue farms and the technology, funds, suppliers and people that go into making that happen. Look at Paul van der wurth, he was a big part in the AQ part of the UES and everyone knows he's great at that component, his background is aquaculture. Would anyone trust him growing and marketing veg? No way. So yes I can respect you could design a working system, probably profitable on paper, but what about everything else? Its the everything else that brings most unstuck. Moving from growing fish and veg in your backyard to a 1ha system has countless inputs from all walks of life. Like I said, your just one person.

Not being a downer, just thinking out loud.

Hey Stu, probably a random sideline, but these guys sorta (and it's a big sorta), have done AQ and then merged into HP.

Big investment capital tied up into it.

This site mainly deals with the tourism/F&B side, but thought it was worth a heads up.

They don't class it as AP, but the plants largely are. This is online with where I am heading, just not as fancy ahaha.


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When searching for investors you have to talk to a lot of people to have a chance. Its a numbers game to a large degree. Remember I had got people to commit three times to contribute funds. Also if you remember one time I actually had bulldozers on site ready to the site cut the next day.

So I've come real close a number of times.

What turned me from the path I was on was not so much the feed back I'd been getting but a story told to me from a dairy guy. Most of the contacts where I got the best results were private"high net worth individuals" but by this stage I'd already talked to all the ones I had a contact with. By this time I was onto super funds, which I knew was always going to be harder. Anyway the story the dairy guy told me was of a $9mil super fund owned dairy farm that was struggling to make a profit. Among other decisions to maintain their bench mark returns they had sold off their water rights during the drought and leased out a substantial portion of their pasture production land. So they employed this consultant to advise them how to get the farm back into the black. He essentially got paid to write a long report that said "you need to let the farm managers manage the farm and follow their advice".

The farms managers had been pulling their hair out but on reading their copy of the report they got excited and prepared a plan to get the farm back on track. This would require $1mil of upgrades and would add an extra 1$mil of profit from the 1st year.

The plan was rejected. The consultant told me "that is the mentality that you are up against. The super funds are so risk adverse they won't invest even in their own assests" That was what made me change track.


Fair enough. What has changed is the approach I'm taking. For years I've avoided small scale systems because the economies of scale are truly awful but if I can't get investment funds for a large scale operation then I'll have to start small.

What's also changed is that I have a plan that will get us from small scale to large without getting stuck at 1000 to 2000m2 like almost every other commercial attempt.

Also remember that the website isn't pitched at you guys. You know AP you know what it is and what it can do. The website is more talking to people who care about food, farming and the environment but don't actually know much about the issues or the possible solutions.


I do but that is not the plan I'll be working.


I think you mean 0.5ha. Yes, and its too small. Standard advice in AQ and HP is to not go any smaller than 200t pa and 1ha, repectively, because the costs of production are too high due to the adverse economies of scale of building greenhouses/climate controlled structures. An integrated AQ and HP operation will have a lower cost of production than comparable stand alone operations but this advantage is thrown away if you then make the intergrated operation smaller than separate operations.


Yep all important. The 1ha project included the people to do all that or the funds to get them.


Yes there is. Trout production in Victoria use to be 1400t pa after the last drought it was down to 700t but now it has climbed back to 1100t. Possibly that means that there ia 300t unmet local demand (maybe not, no garuntees). It does mean that any system that can maintain production during a drought will make a killing during the next drought. There is also increasing over seas demand which I now have good contacts for. Problem is they need a pretty huge regular minimum order.


FOr the 1ha system it wasn't just me. I was the guy running around making it happen, or not as the case turned out . This were funds allocated for a greenhouse manager, AQ manager, marketing, business development as well as my role of integration and innovation manager.

The AQ guy we had at the time had considered using Paul but was very unimpressed with him when he interviewed him for some of the design work. About the same time he performed a number of indiscretions here and demonstrated his lack of understanding of AP systems (his worm comment was the final straw).

I can take negative feed back, I'll either discount it or incorporate it. EBs and others comments about the website and the cooperative farm now has us working on a second site dedicated to the farm.

In many ways the website is working well based on the feed back I'm getting and how it is helping to spur things on. It still needs a lot of improvement so if people have advice please let me hear it.

It does need to be stuff I can act on though. Mudeye's comments about being willing to back myself made no sense to me hence my comments. For the last 8 years every time I've struck a brick wall I've picked myself up and found away around, over or through. I've never stopped trying to find solutions, ways to make it happen. I now feel closer than ever but until we get an operation not only up and running but in the black I'm still very just getting started.

These guys

JUST BELIEVING THAT YOU CAN DO SOMETHING IS NEVER GOOD ENOUGH.......
you have to show that you can also DO IT......

Backing yourself means "to hell with everyone", "I'm starting without them". I know what I'm doing, I trust me, and that's all that matters, I'll show them, I'll prove to the dis-believers that I'm right. I will start off small and year by year ill add to it and put every cent back into the business. I'll WILL stay focused, I'll WILL set an achievable goal each season, I WILL back myself every time and I WILL make a difference..

Every person I know that starts any business must take on that mentality,

THAT'S THE ONLY APPROACH TO TAKE. no other options, no other choices.

Dear, hand me a shovel,3 fish, a bucket of water and that lettuce plant over there....I'll be back soon with some cash$


Being able to get out from behind a brick wall is a good thing, it also suggests you didn't think something through correctly to land there in the first place... as Dirty Harry says" man has got to know his limitations.

I could ask you hundreds of questions which I don't think you could answer.

Are you trying to suggest that all adversity is avoidable? That with proper planning, judgement, talent, expertise and foresight I would have been able to avoid every challenge and gone from success to success?

That's kind of ridiculous.


As of yet you haven't asked any questions about our plans.

Modern agriculture faces some incredible challenges not least access to capital. Corporate Agribusiness is already taking over the modern agricultural landscape because they have much easier access to capital but also expertise. Many methods of modern agriculture require a seriously large scale to be cost effective. This means large amounts of capital, challenges with management, sourcing expertise and access to markets. Small scale operators can't access these requirements any where as easily and as a consequence they are being driven out of business.

20 years ago you could start a small scale operation in Hydro or Aquaculture and make money, today its almost impossible. To succeed on a small scale, believe it or not, is massively harder than large scale. To make it work you have to have a really good plan to work around the challenges and be prepared to seriously sacrifice to make it work.

No where is this more obvious in the hydroponics industry. A 1ha fully teched up glass house costs about $4mil ready to go. A 1000m2 Glasshouse costs about $1.75mil. No amount of discount owner/operators wagers, direct marketing of produce for higher prices can over come that economic fact, the costs of production are just too high and at that scale the margins are non-existent.

That means you need a different plan, a different approach to the tried and true path to failure of starting at a size of 1000 to 2000m2 that has characterised the numerous AP commercialisation attempts around the world.

I've got that plan and its in motion.

Anyone that wants to join the team can apply and if we think they could make a valuable contribution we might take them on. Same with with any investor but we will be setting the terms and we will be looking for more from them than their money.

Whether anyone else is interested or not I'm taking this project forward.

if you want to promote your plan, THEN PROMOTE THE PLAN but don't talk down all the doom and gloom from the past and the unfortunate people who made mistakes and errors in judgement in an effort to promote yourself and your plan.
Are you trying to suggest that all adversity is avoidable? That with proper planning, judgement, talent, expertise and foresight I would have been able to avoid every challenge and gone from success to success? That's kind of ridiculous.


I am learning very quickly that the business you want is a business that will constantly sit on a knife edge between failure or success.



Same with any investor but we will be setting the terms and we will be looking for more from them than their money.
GOOD LUCK WITH COMMENTS LIKE THAT.

Oops, I think I accidentally converted hectares to acres in my head (1ha = 2.5 acres ) .

I don't know anything about your supplementary funding streams, but to my knowledge the crops (especially leafy greens and herbs) have a much faster turnover so you would be able to start generating revenue much quicker than you would with the fish. Running salt based nutrients is very inexpensive (i.e. the cost of nitrogen is dirt cheap) and the sales would allow you to prove your markets which I'm sure investors would love to see.

If your background is not in hydro I would expect you would be hiring someone for that position (greenhouse management) anyways? Just my opinion...but someone who should be able to run an integrated aquaponics greenhouse should be able to switch to hydro and be able to run that as well if need be. If and when things go wrong with the fish, you don't want to have to cut off nutrient supply to the plants as well. The approach to the plant side of aquaponics is very similar to hydro IMO. Nutrient/water/oxygen delivery, pest/disease management, trimming/pruning/harvesting/crop rotation, etc. are all the same. I can see why it would be cheaper to irrigate field crops than hydro, but the yields would be (theoretically) larger in the greenhouse (per m^2).

I guess it all comes down to your markets and how you execute your plan. Good luck!

As I've tried to explain Mudeye I can't legally do that. If you do have a lot of money as you have implied then you are most likely a "sophisticated investor" (legal term). Therefore you might not be aware of the restrictions that people who are not sophisticated investors operate under or people that might talk to them operate under.

Specifically you are NOT ALLOWED TO PROMOTE a possible investment without the appropriate licencees and registrations. Personal communications are fine but responding to posts or putting anything in the open on a website counts as "publication" and would therefore be ILLEGAL.


I haven't put any where near enough information in the public domain for anyone to reasonably form that judgement. My plan to build a large system was precisely because building a small system puts you a knife edge and if you don't have a plan and a means to grow beyond a small system you never got off the knife edge.

Now I'm about to start small, which is apparently what you suggest, and that is going to be a hard struggle in the first few years but I've got a plan and a means to grow beyond that initial size. Three or for years on and we will be fine and if not rosy at well set on our course. What I've wanted to avoid is the almost ubiquitos trap of people building a small 1000m2 to 2000m2 system as a prototype and then hoping that they can use it to attract further investment to expand and become profitable. We won't be in that position. I've avoided getting started until now because I didn't have a plan to avoid that trap. Now I do.

Once we get started we will be on our way and in 5 to 10 years when we will be ready to start on a large greenhouse system we won't need any external investment to do it.


I was quite happy with the terms I have offered investors in the past but they, the investors, didn't come through when they said they would. Some of the clauses and conditions they put on us stopped us from moving the project forward while they dithered for months at time. I'm not putting myself in that position again and if a potential investor doesn't like that well then quite frankly I don't need them as much as a I need the freedom to move the project forward.

Ah ha. Just to say it again, that is a plan for the future and will require some big dollars.


That's right and well will be doing some high turnover stuff from the beginning for that very reason and because we will be selling them directly or almost directly the margins will be pretty good. As to pleasing the investors, most investors want a standard of financial data equal to a bank. For us the opportunities for any investors are in the beginning once we have financial data that would "convince" an investor to invest. Therefore once we have that data it will be the bank that we turn to not investors.


That was the plan for the big system because the funds were there to pay someone. For the current system not initially which is why I won't be emphasing the plant side of things but its also why I wrote what I did on the employment tab of Fish Farmers website.
http://www.fishfarmers.com.au/employment/
On the farm there are a number of opportunities that we have that I won't have the time or head space to focus on. During the course of seeking funding and larger customers for the fish and various plants we could grow I've developed a number of contacts who want other products that won't be produced in the AP system. That is another reason why we will be focusing on the AQ side of things because those field grown crops will need water.

Things are really starting to come together and I can once again see the funding starting to come together. That means that very shortly I'm not going to be limited by capital but by expertise. If I have to I'll handle the hydro side of things and I've got a list of plants that I'm either confident of being able to sell or already have customers for. I'd love for some extra people to come in so that I could start handing things off to people to allow me to focus on developing customers and those supplementary funding streams. Although having said that I'd really love to be able to hand the marketing side of things off to someone


Yep. Too many people start with production (me included) but if you can't sell the stuff you produce your stuffed.

You've answered all my concerns Stu, thank you. Actually I think for me it was just a matter of clarifying your scale and direction. Hard for you to answer I know without going too far into it but Ive got the gist now.

You have some hard work ahead and I want you to achieve your goals. I dabble in property investment and I always know I will make a return on a project, its just a matter of how much and for how long. I mention this because I feel the same way about your project, I know you will profit but time will tell on how well you will do. But I suppose thats like any business.

Will you be selling fingerlings as well as table fish?