Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

TCLynx you guys down in Florida have both alligators and crocodiles is anyone into "Gatorponics" or "Crocponics"?

Does the taste/flavour change much in a larger catfish compared to a smaller catfish?

Not that I know of. I personally am not interested in gatorponics unless I had plenty of free energy and a handy chicken farm because two important aspects of making gator ponics safe/cost effective is
1-you need the free source of food for the gators, dead chickens from a factory chicken farm is what Friendly aquaponics recommended.

AND very importantly

2-YOU HAVE TO PRESSURE COOK THE DEAD CHICKENS BEFORE FEEDING THEM TO THE GATORS to make sure you are not introducing pathogens like e. coli and salmonella into your system.

I don't really like the idea of collecting already dead chickens and cooking them every day to feed the gators.

We didn't notice any taste/flavor change with our 10 lb fish. Granted, she was probably only 3 years old if we figure she might have been a year old when I got her as an advanced fingerling and then I had her for two years. But in Aquaponics I don't expect that much change even if you had them for a couple extra years but the feed conversion definitely goes down the longer you keep them.

It is kinda nice to only need to pull out one fish for a meal for the whole family though.

I hadn't thought about cooking the chooks

I've given a lot of thought about the term: "not biting the hand that feeds you"

Sizing would would also be a major problem.

I always thought that being fed the same food day after day there wouldn't be a lot of change compared to fish eating in the wild where their eating habits would change as the got older.

Not to thread jack here too much but sizing is only a problem because no one has done it enough to figure out how to size it. I think the bigger problem would be flow through the gator pens. They don't live in deep water 100% of the time so having to wash down the pens to get the poo moved through to the filtration area (and the filtration would have to be different since I expect the solids from a gator pen is going to be more solid than our fish poo which is more like pudding then solid.)

Yes they do, do gatorponics here. Check out their lush greenery, and the amount of money the make is nice too.

http://www.gatorland.com/

Just finished your thread, took me most of the day in between chores.

Great stuff and love the pics and sketch-ups. Keep on keeping on!

Hows it all going, JT?

Hi JT, I also live in Wilmington, and have just about finished cycling. If possible, you think I could come check out your setup sometime, it's very nice?

Wow JT, I'm just finding your thread and loving it! I hope I'm not in your same situation, toss up a greenhouse the first year, get a successful AP system running the second year and completely rip it down and expand it the third year... but I'm in the process of finishing the greenhouse and starting the AP system and already have the urge to go bigger... but hopefully I make it at least a few years before I need to go bigger =)

Thanks for all the pictures, truly inspiring.

Ahhhhh this seems to be another awesome AP system that has died... 2 years since the last update... JT where are you?

not all seemingly abandoned system threads equal dead system, it sometimes just signifies that the system is just working and the person is just too busy with new/different interests to keep posting about it.