Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Adult tilapia are more vegetarian, although the younger fish can be quite carnivorous. I really haven't tried feeding them bugs because it just isn't needed. I give them prunings every now and again.

If the barra will eat worms directly, it would seem that this is the more efficient way to feed them. Every time you feed something, you have to factor in a Feed Conversion Rate. So if you raise worms to feed goldfish to feed barra, you are converting the food three times. Just for illustration, assume that each creature has a 2:1 FCR; ie, they must eat 2 grams of food to produce 1 gram of body weight. So using worms-goldfish-barra, you input 8 grams of kitchen scraps for the worms to get 1 gram of barra. If you go worms-barra, you input 4 grams of kitchen scraps to get 1 gram of barra.

All told, I think live food is good for fish. Leafy greens for the tilapia, and worms for carnivorous fish that can handle them. Folks who breed fish will tell you that the best way to condition breeders is to give them live/fresh food. Dad used to breed angel fish and would chop up earthworms for them.

For me it is not practical from a number of perspectives, including:

- I intend to be growing at least 200 if not 400 fish in my big system. The quantity of worms required to even put a dent in their hunger would be huge, requiring a equally huge amount of effort and time on my behalf. Simply not practical given my unfortunate work lifestyle.
- Pellets are simply very convenient. Can put them in an auto feeder if I want and head off to work. All my time with the system can then be spent enjoying the peacefulness of the running water, feeding fish and growing plants.

Don't get me wrong, I think worms are a great supplementary feed and great fun to give to the fish as a treat, but in my view not practical as a major feed source. As you say yourself, the price fetched by worms is quite high. If I were growing them in large quantities, I'd be inclined to sell them at a premium and buy organic food or put the money into organic inputs (and tools) to make my own food.

The fish I am currently growing are omnivores and can therefore be heavilly suplemented with vegetable matter. My long term plan is to make my own pellets using, to a large degree, ingredients grown on site. Therefore I'll still have the convenience of pellets, but the advantages of sustainability, organic inputs etc. I feel I am much more likely to be able to produce the quanity I need using this method and with less effort than having a massive worm farm. I could conceivably be feeding my fish 1 to 2 kilos of food a day - that's lots of worms.

Also - I've gotta admit I've never been all that successful at growing worms in farms, but am very good at encouraging them into my garden through my permie principles. In the garden they make my soil very healthy and will allow me to grow some great inputs for my fish food (one day :-)).

Tilapia will eat worms, maybe not whole, but they will eat them.

When I go fishing on the Colorado River, or the Salton Sea, I only use worms for tilapia. And man, do you get a lot. One day at the Salton Sea, I caught 28 aprox 1lb-2.5lb Mozambique tilapia in an about hour. I had to leave, ran out of worms. lol.
You all are a saving grace about these worms. Night crawler not the best choice I know, but the only one I could get right now.

I found 1 on the ground yesterday morning

And I found another on the ground when I got home yester day.
So I let all of the ones in my GB free in my back yard.

And then I dumped my worm farm bucket (the one in the pic) and sifted throw all of the dirt, not worms, no dead worms. Where did they go? I think they decomposed them selfs.

I don’t think I am going to start another worm farm. But what I am going to do is by red wigglers, and put them in my GB, and if I see any from time to time, my fish might get a treat.

But I was thinking about the Mini Snails as the main food source. So many thoughts, so little money…darn

-df

my thinking was that if i feed goldies to barra there will be better variety to the diet. from what i have gathered fish feed is partly made from crushed up fish carcus. i believe essential fatty acids found in fish are an essential part of some (if not all) fish species diets, for optimal growth and health. i haven't done enough research on the topic so am really just theorizing here. it was pounded into me at tafe so i can only only assume its a vital component. i have a feeling that the fish feed conversion ratio will be higher with the addition of efa's.

again little research has been done on efa's but its clear they will play an essential part in the future. perhaps herbivorous fish don't require efa's as much as carnivorous. the question is do worm only fed goldfish still contain high levels of efa's.

according to wiki some other examples of products containing efa's are shellfish, flaxseed (linseed), hemp oil, soya oil, canola (rapeseed) oil, chia seeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, leafy vegetables, and walnuts.

perhaps these could also be used to boost efa levels.

i'm new to all this so please correct me if my thinking is stray. sorry if i'm taking this topic off track.

i hear what your saying vb.

i have to admit i am somewhat biased toward the potential of worms in ap. i do one day hope to go large scale vermiculture. ironically its because of worms that i got into ap. i was growing so many worms i didn't know what to do with them all. after looking into using them for growing fish, i came across joels site. worm farming has always been the heart of my operation and perhaps hence our different perspectives. farming worms isn't for the faint hearted.

i thinks thats the beauty of ap. there are so many different paths and avenues for people to go down. you could target fish growth, plant growth or even worm growth. the rest of the system will revolve around the target species, adding to its productivity. for example as a worm farmer, i use the ap water to water my worm beds. the beuty is the water coming from the ap setup contains no chlorine, contains bacteria and nutrients which the worms seem to love, is high in DO and has a stable pH. you couldn't ask for better water for worm farming.

to me the fish and plants are a bonus. a very big bonus.

Lots of useful info in all of the above.
I bought a small container of (what we call here) tiger worms to go fishing - they survive/ wriggle longer in the water. I think they call them tiger worms because they have red/pink bands. we did not use all of them so I put the rest into my compost bins. I tryed previously with earthworms in the compost bins - they didn't like it and got out. Anyhow the tigerworms multiplied and finished up in my compost heap which I use on the garden. But tigerworms don't like it in the gardenbeds - I never found any!
Anyhow, about 18 month ago, I had to open up our septic tank (there was a blockage in the pipes somewhere. AND what did I find? I knew from previous 'inspections' that all the **** and paper was floating on top .....
only this time the whole lot was covered in a solid mass of TIGERWORMS!!
They where obviously doing quite well. I don't know how they got into there, although I had tree roots get into it before. The tigerworms did not cause the blockage they were feasting on**** and all that t/paper coming their way. What makes me wonder is all our shower/handbasin/washing machine water goes into there as well - and I always thought that worms (in general) did not tolerate chemicals/detergents.
There is an aussie company who manufactures septic tanks on that principle: tigerworms decomposing/breaking down what comes down the septic. They are now installing their septic tanks oversees and they reckon they find the 'right' kind of worm on every continent.
Any more ideas on the subject?
heka

there has been a bit of talk about the tiger worm here.

they give off a toxin that repels predators, such as fish. if they sold you tiger worms as bait then they may have been misleading you. did you happen to catch any fish?

tiger worms are ideal composters as they have a ferocious appetite. tiger worms are used by large scale worm casting producers for this reason. its also why they would be using them in the septic tanks.

red worms and night crawlers are good for bait.

the advantage to tiger worms is they can be kept in an under gravel filter as the fish wont eat them unless desperate. if you have enough in there you may not need to vacuum the UGF again. the worms will break down the solids for you.

on another note.

i was just reading up on barra in one of my tafe text books.

i came across a very interesting section.

"Food conversion ratios for barramundi fed on trash fish are high, generally ranging from 4:1 to 8:1"

"Pellet-fed barramundi have achieved FCRs of 1.0:1 to 1.2:1 under experimental conditions, but in commercial farm conditions FCRs of 1.6 to 1.8:1 are usual"

so for every 2-6 kg of trash fish, 1 kg of commercial pellet is required. rice is commonly used to increase the bulk of trash fish.

barra are fed on trash fish 2 times a day at up to 10% of their body weight. so if i have 10kg of barra i will need 2kg of trash food per day. (thats an awful lot of goldfish)

now i need to figure out the conversion ratio of worm fed goldfish. i can't find any studies on the topic so may need to get out some scales and start weighing both the worms and the goldies. first i need to see if the goldies survive through the summer and breed on worms only.

Hi vb i saw this worm farm the other day thought you mite be interested 13 bath tubs all with a connecting pipe for worm tea

They are obviously not negatively impacted by the EMR from the powerlines.

and not a lot of barra.

F&F - love that picture. Not being a good scrounger - I'd have buckleys of keeping feed up to 1 bathtub of worms let alone 13.

PS - one of the major reasons for that poor FCR BF is obviously the fact that a goldie or any other fish will have a significant portion of it's weight that is simply water.

They are obviously not negatively impacted by the EMR from the powerlines.

You can say that again Tony

In addition to vermiculture, you could check the thread on BSF culture. Black Soldier flies have a high manure conversion rate, are self-harvesting and cleaning, and could be set up as a sustainable culture.

I would think that combining vermicultre, BSF, chooks, and AP could go a long way towards "closing the loop".

(Although I don't think that DF could do this in his bedroom)