Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Duncan, don't forget to include the fact that your restaraunt could also draw in crowds via "viewing" sessions of this bizzare aquaponics.

Save valuable commercial space by having your aquaponics setup on the roof and green housed over

Steve

Fantastic Duncan. I have a Chef here thinks your idea's a winner already.

Its actually been done in sydney.

Google it, maybe use key words of aquaponics sydney restaraunt

Sounds great Duncan- I have a diploma of buisness in Hospitality management, have runa a few bars and pubs in my time. I'll come and run it for you!! You just pay me in fish and vegies! LOL

On a more serious note, went in to buy some fish for tea tonight, they had a marron in a tank- $36.50 per kilo, said she sells heaps but what people really want from her is yabbies. And she can't find a supplier. I told her about aquaponics (I use any opportunity shamelessly) and she said, get a licence and you have a market!
She reckons they would take as many yabbies as I could sell!

$36.50 per kilo, Shite, and i thoguht prawns were expensive..........

You know, its probably REALLY LUCKY that we are all in different states...........sort of like critical mass for uranium............

I wonder what the critical mass number is for us..........

Now, i've grown enough not to try and make a business venture out of EVERYThING i get into, but Stu, you may have set me back 10 years with that.............Bloody hell!

Sorry duncan, i keep hi-jacking this thread.

SET YOU BACK! SET MYSELF BACK! I don't know whether I'm Arthur or Martha at the moment!

Hi BF, sounds like you have put a lot of thought into it all, that's primarily what I will be doing for the next couple of weeks, that and read, research, and play with the small system I have out the back (it's great fun, I can just start to see the seedlings stretching out a bit now.



Ahhh, not any more, I think he's dead isn't he...?

Nice work Duncan, I'm sure all of us will be interested in your findings.

Hey steve, unfortunately I wasn't able to change my travel plans after all, combination of Qantas wanting an arm and half a leg to change my tix, plus other commitments. Never mind, if possible do you think you nice people could fire a couple of questions at them regarding the commercial/marketing aspect of their business. I'm interested in the technical/hardware/plant & fish husbandry side of things too, but these are all things that most of the people who contribute here are able to help with, and I'm sure we will all get feedback on that from you anyway (can't wait).

Specifically, I am curious to know whether they are able to market their produce as organic, or indeed aquaponic (or whatever) etc and also what feedback they get back from their customer base with regards to recognition of the aquaponics concept. Are the prices of the produce as high as other comparable organic products (price is the main factor determining demand, after all).

Cheers,

Simon

Hey Simmo...

Organic certification isn't quite there yet for aquaponics, evidently there is some issues with the intensity of aquaponics, and organic certification has an ethical as well as chemical sie to it... I know that at the moment talks are going on to try and get aquaponics certifyable, hopefully this will come soon...
Of course you can call it aquaponic...

I have heard of a restaraunt in the US that was set up with aquaponics as an integral part of the resteraunt, don't know what happened to it in the end though.....

Joel

any chance you could give more details on this? what is unethical about the intensity of aquaponics?

thanks joel

It's all about the stocking densities of the fish evidently.. I'm hoping to find out a little more about things in the next couple of weeks about how things are progressing, I'll let you know. I guess they haven't really come up against an organic growing system before that can be stocked so heavily...

Go Yabbie King Monya!

I found a market for my goldies and boy will they pay - $50 - 80 a fish. That's $100 - $160 a kilo!

Show superior product and premium prices will be yours.

As for vegetables, I got more buyers than i could possibly use. Restaurants want my stuff exclusively I've not even finished the greenhouse.

Get a good chef and a superior tasting veg - SOLD!

OK. I'm just off to the plants forum here. I have a list of seasonal availability of produce in NZ markets. This will immediately show you gaps in your own markets due to our similar climates. There will be differences...

An australian supplier of fruit and veg should have a similar list available.

As a Business Development Consultant, I get excited by all of this entrepreneurial talk but I'd like to offer the following:

- If you can't successfully operate a small system, you won't be able to operate a big one successfully and a large system will hurt you much more if you have a significant failure.
- You don't need to be an aquaponicist to run an aquaponics business. You can hire lots of people who understand the mechanics of aquaponics (or commercial hydroponics and aquaculture)......but you won't be successful if you don't have a good understanding of business.
- Any business comprises three principal elements - marketing, operations and finance. If you do not have expertise in all three (and, in almost 30 years as a business operator, I have never seen anyone who was equally proficient in all three areas), you had better partner with someone who does.
- Your first financial return from aquaponics should be to feed yourself. The money that you trim from your existing food bill is your first financial reward.

Simmo, you've already said you're going to be away for up to a week at a time. The protection systems and automatic dosing systems that will save your operation in the event of a power or equipment failure (or a chemistry upset) will cost you more than your aquaponics system. You need a partner.....or an employee. My preference would be for a partner in this situation. Before that, of course, you need a business plan.

Be very careful about springing into business because someone says something is a good idea. About 80% of all businesses that commence on any given day, will cease to trade inside five years.....and, of those that remain, 80% will cease to operating in the ensuing five years. American business educator, Dr Michael Gerber, refers to such people as "technicians suffering an entrepreneurial siezure." These are often people who believe (falsely) that, because they can do the technical work associated with a particular business idea, they can run a business.

There are a variety of other reasons for this dismal state of affairs but the main one is that the people who had this experience simply didn't know what they didn't know about business. They often made fatal assumptions.

In my experience, ignorance of marketing is arguably the biggest issue in business failures. You can find someone who can look after the operations (the technical work of the business) and you can hire a competent accountant to keep you tidy in the financial department, but people who have a genuine grasp of small business marketing are rare.

Marketing for small businesses is not the same as the stuff that is usually dished up in universities. They generally have a view of marketing that is pitched at larger corporations. The practical application of small business marketing is very different. The difference arises out of the need for small entrepeneurs to rely less on maxi-media like print, TV and radio media, and on a more direct selling and service delivery relationship with customers.

Start small.......and learn your new trades (aquaponics and business) thoroughly.

Good one Gary ... very true... I have been self employed for 30 years with a very up and down cycle...some years are good some are bad, and overall it is a bit poor really. I have learned that I know very little.

I have been to a myriad of seminars on "how to do it better" and they are almost always run by someone on a fat gov salary with all the degrees, but they mostly have never done it themselves, or if they have they actually failed, but out that failure they got smart and got a Gov job !!!!!

I reckon that all we self employed should all get an annual Gov grant just for trying..... We should have a Gov guarantee that we will not go broke.

If you want to become a Lawyer their training is heavily subsudised by Gov in the form of monies put into Universities and Aus study grants, then when they graduate they earn big money for ruining people's lives. If they are really smart they become a politician (40% of all Australian polies are lawyers) and then they manipulate and wreck thousands of lives.

Everybody else gets a grant of some sort except us little self employed people. I have relatives who work for the public service and their salary can only be considered as a Gov Grant just for turning up, and they don't even have to do that on any given day if they don't want to. (listen to the outcry of the Pub servs) Gary I hope you don't think I am having a go at you, I do not know anything about your job or business.

This Aquaponic thing is just too new to do as a business as yet, as a little sideline maybe, but we all just do not know enough about it yet, tha't what I think anyway, for what it is worth.

Wow, I have just had a really good vent !!! Now back to work !!! I don't get paid on this public hol here in Bris.

Mojo.

Quite small - but scaling up would not cause a proportionate scaling up of work For example, if you have double the number of fish, then when you open the worm farm you will grab 10 worms instead of 5 and then walk out to feed the fish - the time involved in feeding does not double.

To answer your question: The growbeds are small - about a square meter. The tank is also small, a bit over 1.5 sq meters, and about 40 cm deep (call it 600 litres).

NOTE: This is not an optimal ratio - the grow beds are too small for the tank. This was a test system only. The test was a success, so I am going ahead with the aquaponics experiment. I have almost completed a new system (should be complete in two weeks). The new system is about 4-5 times larger, but I do not expect any major change to my routine.

I will post details of the new system when I have it working properly.