Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

AP is an amazingly simple idea with so many complex and interdependent variables that "turnkey" is a relative concept based on people's (customer's) expectations. The end result is interpreted as a novelty by many people, but in the end I suppose it doesn't matter much to people where thier veggies and herbs come from.

I went to a chain restaurant last night for dinner and ordered a sandwich topped with fresh basil leaves. I asked the manager where the leaves came from, he couldn't tell me exactly and referred me to resaurant headquarters. I never made the call doubting seriously that the basil originated anywhere other than Mexico. Point being that AP has yet proven itself as a viable commercial commodity able to compete with traditional agriculture and break the whole cottage industry/novelty item mold.

We all see the same benefits to AP, but to solve the problem we have to do the following:

Increase awareness by selling the advantages of agricultural use:

1) Organic
2) Natural crop pesticide control
3) Reduced fertilizer costs
4) Reduced water consumption
5) Reduced land use, crop rotation, and down time for farmland.

Reduce Negatives

1) Reduce dependence on non-renewable power
2) Standardize systems for consistent production
3) Reduce start-up capital requirement

Michael, another thing we have to do is stop people giving misinformation and bullshit figures about stocking densities, growth rates, yields, management techniques etc, so that when people do get into it, they don't get dissapointed and disgruntled....

Yeah, there is WAY TOO MUCH misinformation out there!!!

Agree with you Monya....

I'd hate to see people jump into AP based on hype and misleading information....

Like what happened with aquaculture in it's infancy and plantation forests, olive trees, agapanthures (sp?) etc etc....

There's too many fast buck scamsters around anyway, they're not needed in the AP world

I like the "home grown" attitude of BYAP, a matter of do what works best for you. and no need of drips under pressure.

What about Barramundi Blue as a successful commercial aquaponic business? Does anyone know what their background was and how they grew the business to what it is today?

mung beans, Barrmundi Blue utilises fish waste nutrients through 90mm stormwater pipe with net pots..... as do TaylorMade in Ports Stevens.

More a sense of a combination of aquaculture and hydroponics. Both utilise solids skimmers and bio-filters and both use significant run to waste techniques.

Not so traditional AP as we adopt here, and with removal of solids they often have to supplement feed their plants


Here's a link if you're interested Barra Blue

The thing I like here at BYAP is we tend to be a mindful group and consider that every individual has thier own learning curve and personal objective for starting a system inthe first place. Some people are visionaries and are thinking big, others are content with a small desktop system to grow basil. I like that we are sensitive to the fact that people can easily get discouraged here in BYAP if we pile our desires and expectations from AP onto thier shoulders. The misinformation and bullshit figures is largely a result of this IMO and that's where the industry consulting goes wrong. They get carried away with the possibilities and suck the consumer into thier pipe dream.

One thing I am also learning is that BYAP is becoming more and more relied upon as a source for AP and is at the forefront of the AP movement. Joel could probably give us figures on hits and subscriptions, but numbers are growing and it is exciting. We are real people really doing it, and I suppose in that light, we really are the AP cottage industry ourselves! The difference is, our information is not being disseminated for a toll. I rather like that too;)

Having said all this and drifitng farther from what the point was, I do think there are AP parameters that are important to keep in mind, to include stocking densities, growth, yield, management, etc.. and proven practices in a certain systems, such as many of us here at BYAP and around the globe have demonstrated (some better and worse than others). Since not many of us are absolute scientific types and therefore tend to trial by error, all we at BYAP can say is...it worked or me, give it a go. I think that is a good philosophy and I'm glad to be a part of it.

I am starting to network via Myspace with other likeminded folks and have been sending people this way.

Monya, what misinformation do you refer too?

I think Monya is referring to information on other sites, Gotfish.

Ahh, I gots ya.

Hits here are seriously on the increase, we're getting close to 100 registered members a day visiting, and some days we get close to 1000 different people visiting the forum including non-members and members. The main page of my website has had over 12 thousand unique hits in the last 3 months, from all around the world.

http://www2.clustrmaps.com/counter/maps ... ponics.com

The way I’ve always seen it is that to advance aquaponics, to demystify it, we need to bring it out into the open, and be openly accountable for the methods and figures that are quoted. Many people seem to treat aquaponics as a secret society, not wanting to give to much away, only snippets of figures and then vague explanations..

The more people that can begin in aquaponics with open accountable information that is scrutinised publicly the better off everyone will be. And hopefully as conventional agriculture begins to become more accountable for environmental and energy costs, then aquaponics should become more and more viable. I don’t think it’s going to take a huge increase in oil prices before those costs feed down the chain. Growing becomes more expensive, running machinery, fertilizers, pesticides, transporting, packaging etc. I think the time will soon be right for small scale local aquaponic production industries.

Nearly everyone that sees my greenhouse (and gets the spiel) thinks it is a cool idea. Two people want to build their own AP systems. Fruit and vegetables are at least $2/lb here. I think BYAP is a logical answer for feeding Alaska -- but first someone has to prove that it can be done.

And your the man for the job Joel.....

=) and every new system, exposes ap to more people...like ripples in a pond....until there is a tidal wave of people wanting to know about ap =)