Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hiya,

I am lucky enough at the moment to have some spare cash from a voluntary redundancy + long service payout at my last job, enough to start a small aquaponics venture anyway. My new job is part time working for the family business, mainly from home, with occasional trips away to see clients.

I have some questions on the robustness of aquaponics systems, and the amount of time that needs to be invested in maintaining them, in order to successfully harvest marketable produce. I understand that these things would be affected by many numbers of factors, primarily the size of the system and the hardiness of the fish and green produce that you are growning, plus the actual design of the system and the amount of failover/backup that is built into it. I guess I am interested mainly in your experiences with your own system/s and how much investment of your time is needed, relative to its/their size.

From reading the posts on this fantastic forum, I can see that most/all of you have jobs, and full time at that, so I am curious about how much time you actually spend per week keeping things up and running and the fish and plants happy? Some of the larger systems look very impressive, yet seem to be fairly low maintainence once the intial setup is complete, especially for the grow bed side of things.

When I travel it can also be for a week or so at a time, and my girlfriend has enough trouble remembering to feed the goldfish, let alone assist in keeping difficult/sensitive fish happy, or repair anything that should fail while I am away. What do you guys do when you go on holidays (or don't you )? Are you able to leave your systems and be satisfied that everything will be OK when you get back?

Finally, has anyone had experience with a commercial or semi-commercial aquaponics venture? Can anyone see a a market for it similar to hydroponic or organically grown produce?

Thanks guys in advance...

Simon

S77,
Looks like you need a partner...

Maybe some time should be investigated with a non-commercial system first, but it definitely looks like something that could be done commercially, even if on a small scale.

I agree, and wouldn't jump in and invest too much money without research, trialling etc etc. For it to be do-able for me at all, I need to know firstly what I can expect to be able to produce given I can only invest up to about 30-40 hours of my time each week to it, and the bulk of that on weekends... cheers.

Hey S77,

Good to see some more local Perthies here..... I't doesn't take much to maintain a system, though the higher the stocking densities, the more work there is to do.. So far as the commercial aspect, it's very profitable if you have a well designed system. Aquaponics has been proven commercially both here in Australia and overseas, and if your serious about following up the commercial aspects PM me and I'll fix you up with the people you need to speak with.

I have been keeping track of the work I invest in my system.

Currently I do the following to maintain the system:
1. Every evening. Walk through the system, check that water is running, temp looks about right, clip anything that needs clipping, and grab some vegetables for dinner. Time taken: 45 minutes a week.
2. Every day (just after dinner time usually). Throw any kitchen and garden scraps into either the plug flow digester or the worm farm. Time taken: 25 minutes/week. As I walk past the worm farm I grab some worms and throw them in the ponds. This gives the fish some extra variety in the diet.
3. Twice a week (actually more like once a week these days). Check the water PH, Ammonia and Nitrite levels. Time taken: 15 minutes/week
4. Once every month (or two). Take nutrients from plug flow digester and feed algae and duckweed. Time taken: Averages at most 5 minutes/week.
5. Once every 2 months: Move duckweed from the duckweed pond into the fish ponds. Time taken: Averages at most 5 minutes/week.
6. Once every two months. Check batteries, solar panels and leads. Time taken: Averages at most 5 minutes/week.

Total: Less than 2 hours/week.

In addition I do about 4 hrs/week of extra work in making new ponds, building new grow beds and generally trying to improve the very primitive, basic system that I currently have.

I have a full time job and a nine month old baby, so I don't have much time for this. But if you set it up right it does not need much time.

I am a programmer, so I am starting to set up automated systems to SMS me alerts if water flow stops, temperature goes out of bounds, PH goes out of bounds, etc. This means that I won't need to check the system as often.

aeldric,
I can see you will be of help to many A-P's.
Remote sensing great and good luck, can imagine everyone having a need.

This is an interesting topic as I'm looking to do a similar thing in SEQ. There's a whole load of aspects that need to be looked into. Like is there a market for the produce? and the fish? Will local fish and veggie markets buy your product? Can you get varified organic?

There's just a few of the things that have been floating around my head recently as I'm in a simliar situation to simmo.

From my experience an aged and proportionate system is very little work. Although i am a big advocete of testing water parameters i have not tested my 1000lt tank outside for a month easy. Its the same with my aquariums, i test incessently until i am confident that everthing has stabilised and then hardly at all. PH will be the only thing that will keep dropping, but like i've said, tkae the time to put some calcium carbonate in (sea shells are my favourite) and even this will become stable.

You guys that are interested in the commercial side should really come over to melbourne for the open day at minnamurra (functioning commercial aquaponics setup) Details are on the portal page

Steve

Thanks all for your input so far...

Steve it just so happens that I am already booked to travel to Melbourne on the 29th (the Tuesday after) to meet up with the g/f for a short holiday. I'll definitely check tonight if I can change my tickets to get over there a bit earlier for the open day. How far out of the CBD is Minnumurra?

Hmmm I might be able to catch a couple of footy games too, haven't been to Telstra dome yet... and I will be able to justify the trip to the taxman as business research...

Aeldric, can you please give me an idea of the size of your tank and growbeds, just roughly anyway... thanks heaps for your post

S77,

About 56 kms from CBD 45min to an hour.

I'll be going with the G/F, have offered car spaces to Monya and Joel, that leaves one Unless i have offered it to someone else amongst the confusion with all the new members in the last two weeks! If i haven't then you're welcome to squash in

You might as well be talking to a brick wall about the footy!

Thanks for the offer Steve, but don't hold the space for me mate if someone else comes along, if I do get over there I will probably hire a car for a couple of days.

It takes all sorts, from the look of your avatar my g/f and you have similar TV viewing habits, unless thats from his McGyver days.

Sweet deal, another SG-1 fan..............

hi simmo,

great to see another west aussie on the boards.

i am in a similar situation to you. atm i am working part-time and the small amount of money saved is invested in my venture. i recently moved out of home and am currently renting. i have been buisy digging up the backyard and looking for potential grow beds and ponds.

although the future commercial potential of this industry looks appealing, i will be happy if i can simply supply my family organic food produce. imo the price of food will increase exponentially with the price of petrol. i think the gov has done far to little to late to address the crisis. this is another story however so ill keep on track.

having said this, this is a very exiting time to be involved in this rapidly growing industry. i have no doubt in the future there will be a huge demand for organically grown produce, when more research comes in about the benefits of organic food. this is the beauty of aquaponics. it can be 100% organic. with the rapid population growth that Perth is currently experiencing, large amounts of suburban farming land is rapidly disappearing. we will be forced into developing intensive small scale farming to avoid having to transport from far distances. this again will drive up the price of farm produce even further.

then we have increasing droughts and water shortages. aquaponics has the potential to keep water input and output to a minimum.

as mentioned i think your best bet will be to start out small scale to get a feel for things. this will give you a good idea what is required to maintain a system and also if you enjoy it and have the desire to expand.

if you don't have already first thing i would invest in is a worm farm. you can get all you need on the cheap if not free. if you need worms i just had a very productive breeding cycle and can help start you out if interested. just throw me a pm anytime. the earlier you get one going the earlier you will have an endless food source for your fish and plants. you will also reduce most if not all of your garden waste which goes straight back into the system.

if you are serious about fish farming and have the time i would invest in the aquaculture course at Fremantle tafe. the name was recently changed to seafood industry for some reason. not sure why. i plan to start in 2007 and work 1 day with my current employer and claim the doll. the bonus about running an aquaponics venture on the side is that i don't need to report it to centrelink. i can put in as much work as i desire and my payment won't be effected as its a "hobby". its whats called working the system to your advantage.

finally it seems to me that many of the pioneers of the industry are willing to help and share with people starting out. the information that has been made freely available here is invaluable. to me this seems like a very friendly and kind community. people are willing to help out what other industries might see as future competitors. this will only lead to a greater industry which is more likely to succeed. the more we work together like a culture should, the greater the long term gains. we have been lead in a good direction by many folks here.

so basically to sum up why the future of this industry looks bright in the Perth area. it addresses:

petrol prices
land shortage
water shortage
waste disposal

there are many other points but to me these are huge ones. imo the less a system relies on external inputs to run its self, the greater its chance for long term success.

as fat kev would say "I'm excited".

good luck on your endevours and hope to see you round.

On a positive move forward, for a marketing subject i've taken this semester we have to do a marketing plan for an idea we have. I convinced my group to do it on an organic restaurant that has supplied it's veges and fish from it's own auaponics systems. So once that's done I'll post it up on here for you all to take a gandar. I may also need to ask some specific questions of Joel and the rest of the technical team here throughout the project.

Cheers,

Duncan.