Is it a brewery or a tea shop or an aquaponics system or even a bit of a mixture of Permaculture design? It’s so crazy, it might just work?

Wouldn’t it be great to have an aquaponics system running like a perpetual motion machine where you just add a few fish and some plants and the system grows food and beer as well? Heck, why stop there, add a bio-digester and power the whole thing off the waste of the spent grain from the brewery?

This is the brainchild idea of Chicago entrepreneur John Edel who plans on turning a 93,000 square foot disused meat packing plant to a vertical farm with zero waste called The Plant!

Now that’s an ambitious project. Watch this very short clip showing you how the whole system is meant to work.

Getting the whole system to work requires choosing the right tenants. The plant requires the services of a handful of bakers, a tea house, a brewery, a aquaponics fish farm, and mushroom garden to use all the waste in a symbiotic relationship. The waste from one tenant is the raw materials for another. Once the Brewery is set up its all meant to run like clockwork. The brewery’s spent grains will feed the aquaponics fish farm running tilapia and the bio-digestor which is expected to power a generator to power the whole plant. The  waste products from the fish will nourish the mushroom garden or feed the plants under grow-lights powered by a bio-digestor , and the plants (found in the aquaculture operations) will clean the water and send it back to the fish farm. Sort of.

The system is under construction and won’t be ready for a few years yet.

There’s an interview with creator John Edel that gives you a tour of the abandoned meat plant. Down in the dungeons of the plant you can see the aquaponics setup and red grow-lights powering away (around the 6 minute mark in the interview).They intend to fill the entire basement of 20,000 square feet with aquaponic growbeds.

We like the idea of a brewery. Ever Aquaponics system should have one. Makes inspecting the plants and looking at the fish more enjoyable.

There’s nothing finer than to grow your own fish in your own backyard – except perhaps catching them and eating them! Sometime ago we decided to grow a few Barramundi in our aquaponics system. We were told that they were a specialized fish and unsuitable to grow-out for the beginner.

The Warm Water Fish

Now Barramundi do have some specific requirements. They are a warm water loving fish and thrive in water temperatures over 26 degrees Celsius where they tend to pile on the weight.  So if you live in the tropics then Barramundi are the way to go. The problem for us at Ecofilms living in a warm subtropical state of Queensland, Australia was that the fish were good to grow for half of the year but less so in the cooler winter temperatures when their growth slowed right down as they just rested around the bottom of the tank looking very lethargic.

We didn’t want to heat our tanks as that would be an expensive proposition. Anyone that runs aquaponics systems will tell you that during the winter months the vegetable grow beds radiate all warmth out of the system and into the heavens. So unless you have a passive solar green house and some method to heat the water, its best to stick to fish that enjoy your climate.

So we decided to test the conventional wisdom of the day and see if Barramundi would tolerate and survive the cooler winter temperatures where our water temperature would drop down to around 14 degrees C. Fattening them up in the warm summer months is the best method as they can lose condition over the winter as they slow right down at eating. Don’t be too concerned if your fish stop eating. Being cold blooded animals they can well tolerate not eating for a few weeks as their energy requirements to float in the water are not great.

Carnivorous

Barramundi are carnivorous when small or more importantly – they can’t resist taking a chunk out of their little brothers and sisters. Our recommendation if to pay a little more and buy them when they are at least three or four inches long. This way your mortality rate will be less and you wont need to grade them into uniform sizes. In commercial aquaculture systems, barramundi are graded to remove smaller fish from each batch, lengthening their chance of survival.

We wanted to grow them in our small aquaponics system (A Murray Hallam designed Maximus System) with a bunch of Jade Perch fingerlings. As long as fish varieties are about the same size, we have found growing them together is not a problem. In fact we also have some catfish to clean up scraps from the bottom of the tank. All our fish get along just fine.

We found that the batch of barramundi we placed into our system slowed down the growth over winter as expected. They’d laze around the bottom at the back of the tank reflecting an eerie blue glow from their eyes. But we lost none over winter. All survived when the temperature plummeted. Sometimes it was hard to open the hatch and peer in. Especially on a cold day. Would they survive? Would there be any floaters?

They all did fine.

The following spring and into the summer these fish become a lot more active. They are a wonderful looking predator fish. They slap the water first when feed is introduced. Their Jade Perch cousins are more gentle and refined. Jades are a lot more inquisitive and will swim up to check the net you have placed into the water -ready to harvest your fish. The barramundi will eye you with suspicion.

Catching Them with a Net

Now catching your fish in a crowded tank with a net is guaranteed to end in mayhem if you don’t time it right. We’ve seen Murray Hallam lunge into the tank with a net and drag out half a dozen fish with one swoop. Thats one way to do it.

Our technique is to drop the net into the tank and just leave it sitting rigid and waiting.

Fish are sensitive and will freak out at sudden movements. We found they will quickly settle down if they notice after a minute or two that the net is stationary and not a threat. They will resume their normal swimming patterns. This is a good time to select the correct candidate. Resist the urge to suddenly strike wildly. Let the fish come to you. You’ve spend many months growing them so now enjoy the moment of catching them. We found the barramundi that we wanted to catch settle down and approach the net on a routine patrol. A quick wrist action and the fish is scooped swiftly into the net and lifted out of the water. This way we don’t damage the gills of a bunch of other fish if they are also caught and snared in the net. Remember fish are easily stressed and stress can kill fish.

This barramundi weighed in at 866 grams or just under 2lbs. From nose to tail just a tad under 400mm or 15 inches in length. A nice fish for Sunday dinner – with a whole heap of lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers all grown in your own aquaponics system. The best thing is it has no muddy taste. No off-flavors.  Pure clean flaky white flesh.

Delicious.

Coming out towards the end of May 2012 is a DVD title we’ve been working on for well over a year.

Leonie Shanahan’s Edible School Gardens DVD follows the design, implementation and construction of a working school garden from start to finish.

Author and Educator Leonie Shanahan has built dozens of edible school gardens over the years and has been a positive influence on children and their new healthy eating habits. Leonie’s years of study in the fields of Horticulture, Permaculture and Organic Gardening is translated into a passion for the health of our children and the need to make a difference by creating organic edible gardens full of health and abundance in every school and every backyard.

Leonie now shares her secrets in empowering school children to design and build their own organic edible school gardens. Whether you’re a teacher, experienced gardener or just starting out wanting to get your kids interested in eating healthy fresh vegetables this DVD is jam-packed with useful information. Leonie shows you what you must do to create a thriving living system and have fun along the way.

Lavishly illustrated with graphics, animation and onsite footage this DVD shows you the planning and construction stages of creating a successful school garden bursting with food.

Leonie’s method of layering no-dig garden beds with a mixture of rock dust. compost, mulch and other ingredients appears daunting at first and looks a little complicated especially when you see how many layers she uses in her organic gardens. The end results are worth the effort. This DVD shows you how to achieve success. Leonie shares her garden design secrets and soil recipes that is guaranteed to work.

Leonie explains her system.

“We have to get these school gardens looking brilliant from the start, because I know from my experience, there are so many critics out there that want us to fail.” she said. “So I have to get it right and I have to get those gardens bursting out of the ground with food that is going to grow so quick that everyone goes ‘Wow! Look at that garden. How did she do that?’

“That’s why you put the work in at the start and your gardens will tell the story.”

All Ecofilms DVDs have a lot of practical information and Leonie’s School Garden’s DVD is jam-packed with useful information that can guide you to achieve inexpensive solutions working with school kids over the course of a year.

For more information visit:
http://www.edibleschoolgardens.com.au/

Keeping an aquaponics system in the backyard is a lot of fun but do keep a careful eye on the trees and shrubs your have growing around your system as they could be toxic.

Most plants are safe and toxic free but some species of flowering plants can be dangerous once the breeze catches them and they flutter down and land on your fish tank.

Here’s a first hand example.

Flowering Lillypilly

We have a concrete block fence with a border of Australian Lilypilly’s surrounding the outside fence for added privacy. Lilypillys are a dense green shrub and not considered poisonous but once a year, around this time in March they flower a profusion of tiny fine white blossoms. The wind will lay a fine carpet of white fine flowers across the patio, pool and aquaponics system over the course of a few days. In most circumstances the flowers die and dry up within a week.

We have our fish tank covered with timber slats but some of the fine flowers do make their way down to  float on the growbeds and even land on the fish tank’s water surface and sink.

The next day when feeding the fish I noticed that they were sluggish and drugged in appearance. They normally scoot away from the bright light when the hatch is opened but not today. They were “chillin’ out” and in no hurry  to go anywhere. I could have placed my hand under each fish and lifted them out of the water without a struggle. They appeared lethargic and not their normal sprightly selves.

What was going on?

Their water quality was within normal parameters. I looked at the carpet of blossoms and wondered if the plant might be toxic to fish? The following day the blossoms had stopped falling and the fish looked a lot happier. But amongst the group was one floater.  A nice plate sized Jade Perch had died. There were no discernible lacerations or stress markings on his body. But its a worrying lesson to watch carefully the plants you have growing around your tank.

Plant Toxins?

So what is going on? What toxins are dangerous to your fish?
The two primary chemicals that occur in most plants used for stunning fish are saponin and rotenone.

Saponins

Saponins are glycosides with a distinctive foaming characteristic. When consumed by herbivores and mammals they breakdown in the digestive system and need to enter the blood-steam first in order to become toxic. But with fish – the story is different. The fish take in saponins directly into their bloodstream through their gills. The toxin acts directly on the respiratory organs of the fish breaking down the red blood cells.  Not always fatal, but its enough to stun the fish before fresh clean water arrives upstream to revive the fish. Native people around the world have used barks and plant leaves mixed into a paste and balls of the stuff thrown into the rivers to catch stunned fish for eons.

Plants that are poisonous to fish are a multitude. Some anecdotal evidence suggests that certain native Australian Eucalypts are hazardous to fish. Especially any gumnuts that fall into your growbeds and sump tanks. There’s a good reason to keep your system under cover for that very reason.

The ghost gum’s leaves were used by Aborigines to catch fish. Soaking the leaves in water releases a mild tranquilizer which stuns fish, making them easy to catch. An essential oil extracted from Eucalyptus leaves contains compounds that are powerful natural disinfectants and can be toxic in large quantities.

Rotenones

Rotenones are a different type of plant fish poison. Rotenones are an alkaloid toxin called flavonoids and stuns fish by impairing their oxygen consumption. Mainly found in Legumes  it is also used as an insecticide.

Native Folklore

South American Native Indians Poisoning Fish Source: Smithsonian

Botanist Professor Sir Ghillean Prance relates this story from an expedition to the Amazon with a native tribe of Indians in the 1960′s:

“The Maku Indians of the upper Rio Negro region of Brazil are well known for their fish feasts, where they go to a small river and catch a large number of fish by using fish poisons. The time I arranged to watch one of these, we were told that we must set out into the forest early in the morning. After two hours of a very fast walk we came to a small stream and I was glad to have arrived, but our leader said ‘not here’. We came to another stream an hour later just to be informed the same again. This process continued for about eight hours when finally the chief proclaimed that this was the correct stream.

Euphorbia Cotinifolia

We were almost too exhausted to observe the preparations as the men built a frame over the stream and placed their sacks of the fish poison leaves (Euphorbia cotinifolia). Meanwhile the women stirred up the muddy stream and the men began to beat the leaves so that the plant juices dripped down into the water. Very soon fish began to float to the surface and were gathered up by excited women and children.

We had a banquet as all the fish were roasted on fires and eaten. I asked the chief why we had to walk so far to carry out this operation. The answer I received was that they had poisoned fish in the first stream two moons ago, in the second five moons ago etc., until I got a complete description of when each stream had been used. He then informed me that if they poisoned a stream too frequently there would not be any fish left

A list of Poisonous plants that can kill fish.

Recently Ecofilms Jane Gapinski  caught up with biologist and aquaponics consultant Dr Wilson Lennard who was running a little experimental commercial aquaponics system located at CERES a community farm and education center located in Melbourne, Australia.

This community aquaponics system was not designed by Lennard but he was invited to take it over in an attempt to make it work profitably.

The produce that is harvested is sold to the local cafe located at the site.

Dr Lennard in the video points out a few design flaws and shares some tips on improving a system for commercial application.

http://youtu.be/WUgojSGMEfU

Note: Dr Wilson Lennard has asked that this video be removed

Jane whipped out her little camera and filmed this interesting little rave from Dr Lennard about what you should consider important when designing your own commercial system.

He feels that the width of the floating raft troughs at CERES are too wide and ergonomically difficult to manage when it comes to shifting the floating raft trays around. Sometimes building a simple system creates problems later on in workflow management.

…I don’t work on volume. I know everyone in backyards works on how much volume, how much fishtank to how much volume of grow-bed.” he says, “That’s a load of crap.”

Lennard says he designs his systems quite differently from most people who come from a backyard system. He stresses the need for added filtration, mechanical filters, sumps and smart plumbing will make your life a lot easier to manage if you can design your system grow-beds to be modular and inter-dependent. Each trough or growbed should be able to be switched on and off at will. Water flow rates should also be able to be increased or lowered at will to any trough.

Each system should be easy to walk around with easy access to all inspection points. Being able to keep your aquaponics system running only as an aquaculture system will  allow for easy maintenance. Managing to control water flow to various independent growbeds is the key to managing a successful system he says.

He cites the case where the previous occupants harvested all the vegetables in one hit. There was a sudden ammonia spike and the fish started dieing. Not a good way to run any fledgling commercial system. Wilson tends to move his plants around quiet regularly to balance the load of the system.

He can be quite straight forward in determining fish ratios to growbeds.

“I don’t work on volume. I know everyone in backyards works on how much volume, how much fishtank to how much volume of grow-bed.” he says, “That’s a load of crap.”

“Plants use a predictable amount of nutrients everyday and fish produce a predictable about of waste.” he says. “So its about how much fish feed you throw in for the surface area you have and the number of plants that you grow.”

The only thing you need to know is how many fish do you need to eat that fish food that you are throwing in.” he says.

Being able to keep the plants happily fed with sufficient nutrients will tell you how many fish you require.

There are two 20,000 litre systems side by side stocked with trout.

Incidentally, Dr Lennard recommends you grow plants that reap the most return on your dollar. His preference is herbs like Basil, dill and Coriander (Cilantro) and other small easy to grow varieties.

Pooling of water suggests this 3 year old growbed is heavily saturated with fish solids

Its a messy time consuming job but eventually you got to do it. Cleaning out a Grow-bed full of fish crap after three years of service.

Following on from a previous post we wrote  about how long can old media growbeds last using using three quarter inch gravel? The answer seems to be around 5 years.

But what about hydroton? How long will it last?

Hydroton or Lecca are those  little round clay pebbles that are often used in the hydroponics world. The conventional wisdom was generally thought around 18 months.

Last week we got our answer in our own aquaponics system. Its been running continually non stop now for around three years with little maintenance. The only tidy up it received was a bamboo stick into the autosiphon to pick out a few  plant roots strangling the siphon and a rusty horse shoe that was found buried in the other end! A good luck charm? Who knows.

Clay ball Hydroton full of fish waste chokes this grow-bed from functioning properly

The tell tale sign we were experiencing was the pooling of water on the surface of the media. Sometimes this can be attributed to the water flowing too fast into the grow-bed, but not on this occasion. The water was flooding the surface of the bed and refusing to soak into the media.

We dug around the spreading patch of surface water, looking for any obstruction like decaying old plant root balls but none could be found.

The water was not soaking into the hydroton. There was no fish smells or any foul odour at all.

The system started to resemble a rice paddy field with a perpetual flooded top surface area.

Why was this?

Fish Waste

The answer became more apparent when you take a closer look at the fish solids that are being pumped continually into your grow-beds from the fish tank.

Fish solids separate from water quite readily.

Fish solids separate quickly from water

Digging into the media revealed that the system after three years with no maintenance at all has pretty well collected the entire output of fish waste and deposited this fertility throughout the entire grow-bed.
Taking a sample of the chocolate brown coloured fish waste shows that within minutes of settling into a glass container, the fish solids quickly sink to the lower layer forming a heavy barrier, that with time, will impede the flow of water on its way to the auto-siphon and back to the fish tank.

Shorter Siphon Cycles spell trouble

Even with three years of no service, the grow-beds still functioned as normal and managed to filter the water just like a traditional wetland.

But we began to notice a problem with the auto-siphons.

They began to fill faster than the normal 14 minute lag that it took for the growbeds to flood and drain at the start, three years ago.

They were filling and dumping water a lot faster. Within 3 minutes in fact.

Shorter cycles suggested the grow-beds had obstructions and were not dumping most of the water.

Cleaning the System

Digging deep showed the system was pretty well full of fish crap.
Plants were still growing but the system needed a good clean out. The good bit about cleaning hydroton is that it separates from the fish crap quite easily.

Devising an old wire waste paper bin and shaking the basket full of old hydroton in a larger bucket full of water easily removed the crap from the balls.

Three years of undisturbed fish waste accumulate under this upstand

An automated cement mixer might have been easier to implement if one was available – but this simple system proved to be quite effect, but labor intensive.

Its a messy all day job.

Nearly every handful of dirty clay balls showed one or two wriggling compost worms. There were heaps of them in the system.

When all the pebbles were removed, it was time to inspect the siphon upstand.

When the outer shroud was lifted we noticed an inch and a half of undisturbed fish crap sitting like a fat spreading donut at the base of the upstand.

This is the heaviest of the fish waste. No off smells or dead-zones. No anaerobic conditions.

Just a nice dense layer of the stuff which would have covered the entire bottom inch or two of the grow-bed if left undisturbed.

Recycling the Fish Waste

The fish waste was eventually all recycled onto other vegetable gardens and even the lawn got a good dose of the stuff.

Returning the washed hydroton was a lot faster than removing it. Turning the water back on and replanting with fresh seedlings and the system was back to normal pumping out vegetables.

Will we get another three years service out of this bed? Possibly. There is still enough bacteria and worms adhering to all the pebbles so there will be no shock to the system at all. The worm numbers will rebuild in time and the cycle continue for another few years.

Over the three year period this grow-bed produced a lot of food. Spending one day cleaning it isn’t so bad after all.

Continuing on in our audio podcast series of small hobby farm aquaponics people selling their produce locally, we talk with Gina Cavaliero of Green Acre Organics who is expanding her system from a 1000 square foot DWC “floating raft” system to a mix of NFT and Media Bed systems to take advantage of different plants and their growing requirements.

Gina Cavaliero is expanding her 1,000 square foot floating raft system to cater for demand

Listen to the Audio Podcast

Gina Cavaliero from Green Acre Organics talk with Murray Hallam and Ecofilms about commercial aquaponics farm size. How big can you be before you can become commercial and is it indeed viable? 14 minutes mp3 file

 Transcript

Ecofilms: Today, small scale commercial Aquaponics system. Can you make any money from them? We speak with Gina Cavaliero from Green Acre Organics and Murray Hallam. Gina, tell us about your system. You’ve got one system already established. A 1000 square foot floating raft system and you’re building and expanding your system. Tell us a bit about that?

Gina Cavaliero: Sure. We started out with a 1,000 square foot DWC (Deep Water Culture) raft type system and we just expanded it to include an additional 1024 square feet. So we’re just right at 2000 square feet of DWC growth space. Its still being powered by the same amount of fish density fish space so we didn’t have to add on anything additionally to our tank area – but just more grow beds.

Murray Hallam: That’s just great Gina, isn’t it.

Gina Cavaliero: It is. We’re looking at trying to optimize how much we can grow with as little bit of fish as possible.

Murray Hallam: Why have you got that approach Gina about keeping the fish at a low density?

Gina Cavaliero: Well the reason is we didn’t really start out with that intention. We thought we would have a better market for our fish products. But what we found is that it’s just not a really competitive type of product – the tilapia here, because they can get it cheap elsewhere. It comes in imported at ridiculous per pound prices. Also for the fact that we don’t process (the fish) We would have to provide our restaurants and chefs is a whole fish on ice. They love the flavor. They love the texture. They didn’t like the labor and the comparison of getting a few servings out of a tilapia as opposed to fifteen out of a grouper of salmon. So it just wasn’t cost effective enough for them.

So what that meant to us is that we had to look at our fish as just our fertilizer generator.  They are part of the cost of growing our produce. So we want to minimize how many we have so we have the least amount of overhead to raise and rear them and we can produce as much product as possible.

Murray Hallam: Of course you want to do that with fish because Aquaponics is an ecosystem. You’re dealing with a non-chemical growing method.

Gina Cavaliero: Absolutely. We get everything we need out of the fertilizer, out of the bacterial conversion that occurs as a result of the fish and the ecosystem. So we don’t need to do anything else other than keep those fish happy, keep them fed and they do what they need for us.

Ecofilms: Gina, a lot of people have problems with the word “commercial.” You are selling your produce. How big do you have to be before you would classify an Aquaponics operation to be commercial?

Gina Cavaliero: That’s a great question Frank. In my opinion I think if you’re producing a product and selling it, you’re essentially commercial.  You’re putting a product out for sale. So we have this concept of mega-farms which is pretty much what’s dominating the landscape of agriculture these days. That’s kind of far removed from what in my opinion we need. We need small family sized farms where we can really concentrate on delivering to the community. Because that’s what people are desiring. They don’t want this commercialized, processed product.  They want to know their farmer. They’d like to have that relationship and knowing their farmer and knowing their food. There’s so much security and sense of comfort that they receive from that. So, you know, you can start out as a very small sized farm and go to your farmers market and sell to your community, your neighbors. In my opinion that’s commercial. Your selling what you are doing.

Ecofilms: But is it viable?

Gina Cavaliero: It is definitely viable depending upon size. Depending upon how much one needs to generate. I get that question a lot. Can I make a living off it? Well I can’t answer that because I don’t know what each individual needs to make a living. That’s a variable number.  Can it support two people? I believe so.  I think if you have the land, the space to do it. Its definitely viable.  I think if you have to incorporate any kind of additional mortgage or lease – I think it will definitely be more challenging. I don’t think its impossible, but I think it escalates you into a larger category where you are looking at paid labor. Ideally what we’re trying to do is to do this with two people. Not to have that addition of paid labor.

Murray Hallam: That applies to any business though really. Any small business that you run, once you start employing people and taking out leases on vehicles or equipment or whatever. It’s the same. Its no different to any other business.

Hey Gina, I’m getting excited about April. I’ll be over at your place in April and for me that’s a bit of a long trip across the big wide ocean but I’m just looking forward to getting over there because you are running a training program. Do you want to tell us a bit about that?

Gina Cavaliero: Sure. We’re really excited about it too. We can’t wait to have you back over here to our side of the pond. What we’re doing is a four day intensive course and we teach everything. Its not just the nuts and bolts. It’s the pen and paper too. We’re going to cover business aspects. SEO management. Why would a farm need a website? Things as intricate as that. As well as managing day to day operations. How to construct a system. How to manage the system. Dealing with fish, planting, harvesting. You name it. Everything you need to do to replicate what we do – we’re going to teach.

Murray Hallam: Fantastic.

Ecofilms: And Murray what’s your involvement in the course? What will you be teaching?

Murray Hallam: I will be talking about media grow beds. That kind of thing, more of the hands on practical kind of stuff. That’s what Gina has asked me to do so I’ll be excited about doing that and of course to meet a lot of my USA friends. But look there’s another thing that’s going on there, that I’m excited to see and listen to and that is Penn and Cord Parmenter are coming down. Can you tell me a bit about that please?

Gina Cavaliero: Yes. We’re excited about the addition of a one day workshop that is in between the four day courses that we’re running simultaneously. Penn and Cord are going to teach their practical application of a passive solar greenhouse. What these folks have done is enable themselves to grow year round at 8,000 feet in Colorado. Incredibly cold non forgiving environment and they grow year round. So what they’re going to do is teach folks how to replicate their green house. A passive solar design. They are also going to do a segment on seed-saving. Its so relevant to what we need here. The vast majority of growers in the US really have to deal with inclement weather and cold temps.  We actually had an experience with really bad freezing temps for a prolonged period of time and a passive solar greenhouse would have done wonders for us.

Murray Hallam: Where I live in south east Queensland, we’ve got a fairly good climate. Our worst winter day is a frost that’s just freezing for a couple of hours and that’s it. I’m frequently asked about growing Aquaponics in inclement or cold environments.  So that’s really interesting because going back to what you said earlier about the farms you see for the future being small family and mom and dad kind of operations, in selling their stuff locally, its really important for people to be able to grow Aquaponics anywhere. As you say, cold weather climates make it challenging. Imagine if you had to build a greenhouse and you had to have the gas fitted and the big electricity bill and on and on it would go. That’s why I’m so interested in what Penn and Cord have to say. Its going to be really interesting.

Gina Cavaliero: I agree. I’m excited by it. Our partner in this Sylvia Bernstein has actually taken Penn and Cords class and is quite familiar in what they do.  So for me its going to be a treat to sit in on this workshop as well.

Ecofilms: Gina just before we finish up, your expanding your Aquaponics system. Can you tell us in which direction you’re going? You’re making a demonstration Aquaponics site that covers all the different aspects. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

 Gina Cavaliero: Yes. We started out as deep water culture. Raft type. And that is absolutely the prevalent type of growing system for commercial. That’s what’s taught elsewhere with good reason. It has its pluses for commercial type growing. What we discovered doing this for some time is that we really needed to diversify our crops and we needed to optimize where those crops grew. We can get some great growth out of herbs for instance in our DWC. But what we found is that they take up quite a bit of space over a long period of time. When in that same bit of space we could have turned over lettuce perhaps three to four times in the same time span and generated quite a bit more money. We want to take those herbs and put them in a more conducive growing environment which for them means a NFT system. So what we’re doing, we’re tieing in NFT, media, vertical all in together with our DWC. So we can take different crops, put them in the best place where they’ll grow most optimally. Perhaps that means not taking up space. Perhaps that means being mobile in a DWC system and we’ll have a great example of different systems and how you can incorporate those systems together.

Murray Hallam: Actually Gina you’ve also found with supplying your chefs and customers that they don’t want just lettuce every week. They want other things.

Gina Cavaliero: They want anything and everything. I can probably say we have still not satisfied our chefs. They are ravenous for anything. They want different things. They want unique items. They want us to grow certain things specifically for them so they can have something that no one else has.  They love our lettuce products. We hear all the time how its so much better than anything else. Its sweeter. Its more tender. The colours are more vibrant. They love it. They want more of it. They want different things.

Ecofilms: Wilting. I’ve heard stories of people having problems selling their produce because once they pick it they take it out of water and the plant just flops over and wilts. Do you have that problem?

Gina Cavaliero: That is usually indicative of the time that you are harvesting. We harvest specifically lettuce and greens very early before daylight. It has a lot to do with the stomata opening and how it affects the plant as well as temperature which is very relevant for harvesting. So there are some keys and tips of the trade so to speak that we are going to share in our training so people will not have that issue.

Ecofilms: Fantastic. I wanted to ask you what plants are the most profitable but maybe we should keep that for the course.

Gina Cavaliero: (laughing) Yeah we can keep that for the course, but its really market specific. I stay away from making statements about what might be really great here might not be really great in Louisiana or California or Colorado. Research your market. Become very familiar with it. Know who your clientele is.

Ecofilms: So how do people find out? What days are the courses? You got two groups, April 21-24 as well as April 26-29. Why are there two sessions?

Gina Cavaliero: We decided to go with two sessions because we anticipated a really good response. We know that we are offering something that really is not being offered elsewhere like some of the other commercial trainings. There’s something unique about ours. It involves the fact that we’ve been doing this. We do it everyday. We have some incredible industry leaders like Murray and Sylvia joining us. And its comprehensive. There’s everything you need to know.

Ecofilms: Where do you book it? Where do you sign up?

Gina Cavaliero: You can go to my website which is www.greenacreorganics.biz I always tell people  there is an “s” on organics, not on “acre”. It will link you though to the registration page. All the information you need to know is right there at our website.

If you like this audio series, why not subscribe to our free podcast at Itunes. Listen to Aquaponics on your Ipad or audio device or whatever gizmo you have. Leave a comment and rate the podcast. If you have a question for Murray Hallam, leave a message below. Thanks for listening.

Just as compost worms thrive in a media bed aquaponics system, the tiny Gammarus crustacean is ideal for Floating Raft and any Filtration systems where fish waste collects.

The Mighty Gammerus Photo courtesy of Michal Maňas

Behold the Mighty Gammarus!

Behold one and all, I’m here to tell you about one of natures unsung heroes,
All dramatics aside there is an organism that does a lot of work with very little credit.

Gammarus, commonly known as scuds in Northern America, are a tiny crustacean that lives basically everywhere on the planet in one form or another. There are over 200 species of Gammarus making them one of the animals on the planet that are most prolific – with the most variety, and you all thought there were many types of dogs and cats. There are fresh water types, salt water types, and brackish types of water.

These little guys are detritivores, which is a big word for waste eating organism. They eat anything dead and rotting, and also feed on growing algae and pretty much anything else that they can get their hands on, but they prefer the dead stuff first.

Without these guys there would be heaps and heaps of solid fish and aquatic animal waste floating around.

They managed to turn about 50 lbs of solid fish waste into nothingness in just a few months.

I was working on an aquaponics farm when we one day realized these guys swimming around in the system. At first we had no idea what these guy were, what they were doing in the system, or how they got into the system in the first place. We figured since we hadn’t noticed them all too quickly we should leave well enough alone, but keep a closer eye on the system as time passes… well, what we found out through observation is these guys handled the solid waste problem like it was their job, that’s probably because it is their job. They managed to turn about 50 lbs of solid fish waste into nothingness in just a few months.

During this “watch and lets see what happens” time frame we did a bunch of research on what they could possibly be. The words “gammarus,” and “scuds” kept coming up with pictures that closely resembled what we were seeing, but because of how extremely small they are it was hard to tell at first. One day, we got a camera and waited for one of these little guys to sit still long enough for the lens to focus on it and snapped a picture. what we saw in the picture confirmed what they were, they were indeed these magical animals.

Now, in the arena of aquaponics these guys could be very important. With the Gammarus in the aquaponics system the need for mechanical filtration could be lessened, if not eliminated all together. On a small scale the Gammarus can handle the amount of fish waste coming out of a fish tank in a low density system to the point where no mechanical filtration is being used. This means a more natural ecosystem in the aquaponics system.

Another benefit of the gammarus is the mineralization (big word for breaking down solids) of the fish waste for the plants to use instead of removing these solids with filtration. This means all wastes are being recycled in the system and being fed to the plants.

Now, conceptually, this means you could theoretically run a system on organic waste. You just throw bits of organic wastes into the systems and the Gammarus break it down and in turn the nutrients eat the gammarus waste. This could fix the problem of having to feed fish, which over time can be costly.

Most people are already using Gammarus on a daily basis. Gammarus are dried and sold as quality fish food flakes, so those little red shrimpy things you’re feeding your decorative fish with, those are a species of Gammarus.

Gammarus and Aquaponics

My thought for Gammarus in the future are centered around the world of aquaponics. If a system can be run on a small scale with a low number of fish in a tank to provide a constant stream of waste, and then supplemented other organic waste to the system, this would mean using garbage to make money, if this type of system can be scaled up to the commercial levels… this would be a better alternative to composting. Instead of using organic materials and piling them up and waiting for them to decompose to use as plant fertilizer, you’d take the raw organic materials and add them to your systems for the Gammarus to eat.

If that theory ends up not adding up to efficiency standard of production, you could always find your local aquaculture farm and take some waste from them. Actually, you could have the aquaculture pay you to get ride of their wastes for them and in turn use that waste that you were paid to obtain and turn around and feed it to your Gammarus driven system and make more money. That’s basically killing two birds with one stone. Instead of your feeding cost of the system costing you money, you’d be making money to feed your system, which would grow produce and make you more money.

After looking into this the biggest question I’ve asked myself is, why hasn’t this been thought of before? How is it that aquaponics has been around for so many years and no one has noticed these little guys, or their potential to change the entire industry?

Now that you’ve read this, if you have a system, go and check the stuff floating around the bottom of your system and see if you have these little guys. check you solid settings tanks or anywhere fish poo might be building up…

If you don’t have any Gammarus in your system, you should look into getting them.

If you have them in your system, you now know why fish poo hasn’t been a problem for a while.

Where do you get them?

As it stands right now Gammarus cultures can be bought for a fairly cheep price on the internet. A simple trip through Google with show you many site selling tiny batches of Gammarus that fish breeders use to grow their own high protein fish food. If you don’t want to buy them, you could always go to a nearby lake or stream and start turning over rocks.

Really I just wanted to write this to give proper credit where credit is due. I feel that anything that does a job, and a job as important as waste removal, deserves some sort of recognition. We’ve been relying on these guys for thousands of years and haven’t even noticed their existence. so i think it’s about time to say thank you to the Gammarus for keeping all of our water-ways a bit cleaner just because they are around.

Damon Polta

This guest post is written by Damon Polta who regularly contributes on a number of Aquaponics Forums here in Australia and in the United States. Damon’s motto is “Red is to color of love and rage – life’s greatest irony!”

Murray Hallam roadtests the Australian Jade Perch a fish suitable for Aquaponics.

Continuing our Podcast series. Today we road test the vegetarian loving  Jade Perch with Murray Hallam. He’s always grabbing one out of his tank to show visitors. Whats so good about them? Should you consider growing Jade Perch if you live in a warm climate? What are the health benefits of eating Jade Perch and will it eat the food grown in your aquaponics system? Even the green stuff growing in your fish tank like algae?

Listen to the Audio Podcast

Murray Hallam speaks to Frank Gapinski of Ecofilms about why Murray loves his Jade Perch. A fantastic fish if you can get your hands on them. 15 minutes mp3 file

Jade Perch is ideal for Aquaponics

Ecofilms: Now Jade perch tell us little bit about this fish that has got people raving about growing it in Aquaponics?

Murray Hallam: Well Jade Perch is an Australian native and its from central North Queensland, the Barcoo river system where it is native to and so is the fish that’s not really tropical but almost tropical.

One of the things we must realize when we’re raising it is we cannot let the water go below 15° C because if we do the fish don’t like that and will probably die. Will actually stop feeding and may die, so that’s where they come from and they are just an amazing fish. I believe they are the fish of the future personally. There are a few reasons for that.

One is their ease of raising. They are so easy to raise in tanks. They just fit well into tank culture.

They grow quite rapidly. You’ll get the fish of table size, plate size within 12 months. Some fish sooner than that. If your growing a batch they tend to grow pretty much all at the same rate. You will get some size differences obviously but they are good for batch growing like that and the other thing about them that is truly amazing is that they are extremely high in Omega 3 fatty acids.

Ecofilms: The CSIRO, the Australian scientific authority did a test on Jade perch and they tested 200 fish including Atlantic salmon and sawfish and silver perch and other fish, sea fish and so on and came out with this figure that the Queensland Jade perch contained an incredible 2483 mg of Omega three fatty oils in their flesh per 100 g of flesh and this was an extraordinary high quality. They are an oily fish aren’t they?

Murray Hallam: They really are. The fascinating about that test is that it’s a freshwater fish from warm water, now the general knowledge is, the generally accepted belief is that to have Omega three fatty acids in it –  the fish must be a cold water fish from the ocean and this is the general knowledge that is out there and everyone assumes that but I must be getting old because I yell at the TV. When you see these health shows and they say you must have a cold water sea fish to get the omega-3 fatty acids and here right in Queensland – right under our noses is a freshwater fish from the Barcoo River system that is so very high in Omega three fatty acids and do you know why? Because the Jade Perch is basically a vegetable eater. It wants to eat vegetable matter. It’s natural diet is algae and riverbed weeds and that kind of thing and of course as we know the building blocks for Omega three fatty acids comes from plant matter.

Omega 3 Chart and Jade Perch

The fish are just great at processing and converting it and turn it into the omega-3 fatty acids but the building blocks come from plant matter which is a fascinating thing. So in North Queensland, The James Cook University in fact in North Queensland has identified over 200 different types of unique algaes in Australia They are not found anywhere else. This is what the Jade Perch live on in their natural habitat. They eat this kind of thing.

Ecofilms: Now that brings us to the next question, whether the Jade perch living in your aquaponics tank will have the same level of Omega 3 when fed on just a boring diet of fish pellets?

Murray Hallam: Well probably not. Nobody really knows that yet because no one has done the tests that we know of that we are able to identify. The CSIRO did the tests on wild caught fish and straight out of the river, the Barcoo river system, but no one has done any tests or growing tests on Jade Perch to test their oil content.  I would suspect that the omega-3 fatty acids are not as high in fish tank reared unless we make sure we give them a diet of plant matter as well. Now Jade Perch just love eating plant matter you can keep my pellets, the do very well on commercially available pellets but if you throw a lettuce head in that was left over or gone to from your Aquaponics tank, they just rip it apart, they just go for it. They love it, so much. We frequently do that to give them a varied diet.

Ecofilms:  And you can feed Jade perch a variety of different green feed stock. I’m just thinking of some of the algae that you could grow or duckweed. Tell us a little bit about that?

Murray Hallam: Well of course they love duckweed. Frequently if I need to go away from weekend, I have a daughter that is in Coffs Harbour so we go down there for a three or four day weekend and I just simply put a couple of handfuls of duckweed in each tank and I know that the Jade perch are very happy for the weekend. When I come back there not much duckweed left if any and they’ve been taken care of. They love eating that kind of thing.

Ecofilms: I’m very interested in fish that eat algae. In one of your videos you use a broom to scrape the inside of your tanks to keep the whole system free of algae because algae robs the system of oxygen. Just wondering whether you could encourage algae in a tank for the Jade perch to suck the stuff off the side of the tank?

Murray Hallam: They will do. I have observed them doing that but of course if you’re going to feed them pellets then that’s an easy option to the fish as well, so I think to get them to eat that on a regular basis you would have to have another feeding regime. We need to have someone do a study on Jade perch and the feed that is required to produce this Omega three in their oils. Nobody really knows exactly how much they really need and how you produce the right kind of algaes.in a home system.

There are numerous varieties of Algae that fish eat

The trouble is if you feed them commercially available pellets, that’s very convenient and its convenient for the fish too. They get a feed very quickly and very easily and so they become a bit lazy I guess they go to the pellets first. That’s why I like to give my fish duckweed and lettuce and sometimes I give them nothing else but that three or four or five days, just to save money on pellets to start with and give them a varied diet of their natural thing I think. The other thing I do, I tried all sorts of different vegetables out of the garden and the thing they definitely have a preference of what they like, for example, Cos Lettuce is their favorite, without a shadow of a doubt. They’ll eat that before anything else. Then they’ll go through a variety of lettuce and the last one which is quite funny I think is silver beet or Swiss Chard as some people call it. They’ll eat that only if they had nothing else for a whole day. So that tells you something, doesn’t it.

A couple of years ago when I was in California, I met a very interesting man down there in Southern Californian who has a huge greenhouse and he is doing a lot of experiments on trying to come up with a feed that is made of natural products like duckweed and a few other plants that he had there. Coming up with a feed that is totally balanced and the idea being that you can grow everything you need to feed your fish on your own property.  I think that’s a very laudable program to be involved in and I think thats something that needs to be pursued.

Ecofilms: What about black soldier fly larvae? Some people have said that they’ve tried to grow the things, those little grubs and the fish won’t eat them?

Murray Hallam: I had the same experience with Jade Perch in particular. My experience has been if I harvest black soldier flies by hand before they become mature, when they are still in a white condition rather than going the hard outer shell then the fish will eat them quite readily. So once again, a lot of interesting things we need to explore.

Ecofilms: Where do you get Jade perch from? If you wanted to get a bunch of fingerlings and you live in Australia, where you get them from?

Murray Hallam: There are several hatcheries in south-east Queensland here that produce Jade perch every summer. They hatch them out by the thousands and sell them around. Generally speaking they cost about a dollar. S1.20 per fingerling and there’s a number of hatcheries on Internet that you can find that sell Jade perch.

Ecofilms: What about if I was living in America and I wanted Jade perch. How do I get them?

Murray Hallam: I think at this time it might be a bit impossible really until some person over there, some hatchery type company brings them into the country, goes through all the legal process that they’ll have to go through to bring into America and then make them available.

I think the USA is a bit like Australia state-by-state you have to fight the regulations in order to be able to use them that but I really believe they are the fish of the future. I really do because the other interesting thing about Jade Perch that I forgot to mention is that they would be a very good thing for the commercial industry who might want to grow fish for the fillet market. High recovery of fillets in the body.

Ecofilms: Murray what do they actually taste like?

Murray Hallam: They taste great! When we cook them, we have two ways we cook them. We either steam them and then serve them up with the usual veggies you might eat with a fish dinner. Or we smoke them. Just a simple smoker that you might take camping or hunting. When smoked, an average plate sized Jade perch will smoke really well at about 25 minutes. Beautiful.  Because they’re so oily, they smoke absolutely beautifully and because they’re oily once again if you steam them, their just beautiful on the plate. Lovely white flesh. Not too many bones. No more or less bones than in any ordinary fish.  Very, very easy to get a whole lot of good meat off! Fantastic.

Smoked Jade Perch - Yum!

Ecofilms: How big do they grow in aquaponics system? I have people over yesterday who couldn’t believe that the fish will grow big in a tank. They think they’re like goldfish. That they’ll only grow to the size of your fish tank (and stay stunted).

Murray Hallam: Well I’ve had some fish that have grown well past two kilos. What I found with a lot of fish, if they get too big then they lose their niceness of flavor. They become a bit tough to eat so the perfect size fish are around about one or two pounds or 1 kg, Half a kilo to one kilo. Beautiful to eat, and they grow quite rapidly to that size. You’ll get one pound or 500 gram fish, Jade perch in 12 to 15 months in a home Aquaponics system. Fantastic.

Ecofilms: Can you breed them?

Murray Hallam: You could but Australian Native fish traditionally are very difficult to breed and that is because their natural habitat, the way that they have evolved is that they might be in a muddy creek – because in Australia we have droughts, long droughts, they might be in a muddy river or lagoon, for three, four, five years. No fresh water flying through and that’s where they exist. Of course they do not breed when that’s going on. Then the rains come and there is a fresh flush of water through the rivers – they breed. The hatcheries have tried to replicate that. Sometimes it works and sometime it doesn’t.  A number of years ago the CSIRO in Australia synthesized the hormones that are needed and of course what happens now the hatcheries do, they get a mummy and daddy at the right time of the year and they give them a hormone injection and a few weeks later a few days later they do their thing and we get thousands and thousands of little hatchlings. So that’s how its done in modern day times. Some people might find that objectionable and say its not natural but we’re yet to discover what that sequence is to be to get them to breed naturally.

Ecofilms: And growing them in aquaponics is the main thing. I must agree we have about 30 of them and they are an excellent fish to grow in aquaponics and power the system. Their poop is quite transparent. They don’t pollute the water as much as other fish like barramundi do.

Murray Hallam: No their poop is – I don’t know how best to describe it. Their poop comes out like suspended solids. It is not great big lumps of poop at the bottom of the tank with Jade perch or silver perch for that matter, another Australian native, so the solids of the fish they produce are very easily picked up and carried away by the pump and sent through the system to be caught by your wonderful gravel grow beds or if you have a filter in your system, by the filter.

So they are a very easy fish to raise in a home system. They are very tolerant of not so good water conditions. They are very tolerant if being spooked or being upset. They settle down quickly. Just a great all-round fish.

Ecofilms: Aggression. Someone was saying that they can be quite territorial and chase one another around in the tank.

Murray Hallam: Yes, we see that in our tanks. We have seen fish with bite marks on the sides of them. They have been getting some kind of picking order discussions with each other. We don’t know what brings that on. Maybe its a pre-mating thing? Like all fish if you’re able to sex them easily you’d be better off with one male in the tank with several females because it’s the males who fight over territory. But by and large that doesn’t happen all that often. They’re not an aggressive fish like barramundi are for example or Murray cod are – no way. Jade Perch have got a very small mouth so they tend not to try and eat other fish. We’ve actually done experiments and got small mosquito fish out of the dam which we got down the back which a little tiny tiny fish, half an inch long. Five millimeters at the most and we put them in the tank with the Jade Perch. Not fed the Jade Perch for several days to see what would happen. The little fish swim around, the Jades won’t touch them. They’re just not interested in them.

They’d rather eat your lettuce out of your sandwich.

Ecofilms: Vegetarians! Vegans.

Murray Hallam: There you go.

Ecofilms: Thank you very much Murray. That was a wonderful discussion and we’ll have more next time.

If you like this audio series, why not subscribe to our free podcast at Itunes. Listen to Aquaponics on your Ipad or audio device or whatever gizmo you have. Leave a comment and rate the podcast. If you have a question for Murray Hallam, leave a message below. Thanks for listening.

Green Acres Organics DIY Small Commercial Aquaponics System

Is it possible to build your own small scale commercial aquaponics system without costing you an arm and a leg? How much should it cost to build it yourself? How much money can you expect to earn? Where do you sell your produce? Where do you go to learn more about all this stuff?

We grab hold of Aquaponics kit builder and teacher Murray Hallam and get the low down on his training course and how much money a small DIY commercial Aquaponics system would cost you to set up. His answers may surprise you.

Listen to the Audio Podcast

Murray Hallam speaks to Frank Gapinski of Ecofilms about his commercial aquaponics course, who its for and how much such a system would cost to build. 15 minutes mp3 file

Murray Hallam with Gina Cavaliero at Green Acre Organics who built her own system

Transcript

Ecofilms: Now you’re running a course about commercial Aquaponics. Tells all about the motivation behind it because you were doing workshops last year in backyard systems. Is this the new hot thing?

Murray Hallam: Well it certainly seems to be from our perspective because we get phone calls literally every day from people who are wanting to go into commercial Aquaponics.

Now the definition of what is commercial is quite elastic as you can imagine for some people. Probably the biggest group of people we talk to our people who are at retirement age or near retirement age, they discovered that their superannuation pension plan is not going to get as much income as they thought it would so they what about do something that will bring in a $500 or $1,000 a week and is not too stressful and they see aquaponics is a great way to go.

Of course behind all that is their desire to be able to produce good clean food. Food through security,food purity reasons. So that’s what motivates them. That’s what excites them about aquaponics and they want to learn to do at that level, and of course then there is the next group of people who are actually into the idea of a sea-change or a tree-change as we call it. They want to move to the country. They want to change their lifestyle. They’re sick and tired of living in the city and they want to do something they see as sustainable. Its a good thing to do that is going to provide good food and they can make a nice living out of it.

Thats the next group of people and once again that’s not a massive great big farm.

Then you’ve got another group of people which is very small, who see it as a way to build a mega-farm.

I personally don’t think that’s the way Aquaponics will succeed.  I think it’s going to be small family farms. Small suburban farms. Local food distributed locally. Cut down food miles. Food purity. Food security. They are all good reasons to do Aquaponics.

Aquaponics ticks all the boxes in those areas. Aquaponics commercially.

This 1,000 square foot system is being expanded to cope with local demand for fresh aquaponically grown lettuce

Ecofilms:  Because a lot of people when you say commercial aquaponics immediately think of enormous farms. Some of the large hydroponic farms and so on. Is there a limit to how big you can go commercially with aquaponics in your view?

Murray Hallam: I don’t think there is a limit.  I think that anything is done on a hydroponic farm scale could also be done aquaponically.  One might ask why would you want to do it aquaponically when it already is proven to do it hydroponically?

Well the simple answer is aquaponics is an ecosystem. By combining the two disciplines of aquaculture and hydroponics the third brand-new discipline all of its own called aquaponics has evolved and the beautiful thing about it is – what makes it distinctly different from those of the two is that it is an ecosystem. It relies on natural processes in order to produce the nutrient for the plants, in order to keep the fish healthy and plants happy. You produce two products (fish and plants) out of the same system.

Its very efficient and I see no reason why one day we will see great big farms. But personally I think the way the world is going – food miles need to be cut down. So it is no longer going to be economical to grow plants in one part of the country and transport them thousands of miles to somewhere else for sale. People are going to have to be to produce food locally much more locally. They are going t demand it to be delivered to them in a much fresher state. In a much purer state.  Aquaponics ticks all the boxes.

Ecofilms: So you are about to embark on a course teaching commercial aquaponics in Australia as well is in the US states in March and April of this year. Can you tell us a little bit about what people will learn, will discover in that course? Will it be just a course to introduce them to that? Or will they be able to go home and have enough material in their hand to embark on a project?

Murray Hallam:  Yes the training course we’re doing in Brisbane in March will actually have hands-on building of troughs and fish tanks to show people exactly how to do it so that people can go away and build it themselves or employ a contractor and know exactly what the contractor ought to be doing so they get the result they want. They will also have training in our legal requirements. What are the legal requirements at the moment in Australia for running an Aquaponics farm?  We will touch on business marketing. All that kind of thing because really the key to making it successful is being able to sell the product, because if you can’t sell the product at a good price then the whole thing goes up in smoke. So we’ll have a lot of discussions about how to sell the product. How to gain a premium price of your premium product and then of course will be the theory of the whole thing. How does Aquaponics work? How does that bacteria convert the material? How does it make it all work?

People need to understand that and thats a general outline of what will be covered in a very broad way.

Ecofilms: What would be the upfront costs for someone who wanted to set up a small commercial Aquaponics system? Say they had are some acreage and wanted to perhaps sell (produce) off the road or go to a farmers market. What would their costs be to run something that could earn them $500 to $1000 a week?

Murray Hallam: Well at that level, if you going to build it all yourself and do it all yourself you could build it for about $20,000. That’s my guess. Buying new materials and providing all your own labour and buying a decent greenhouse or greenhouse materials and that kind of thing. Once again that depends on where you live in the world. For example here in south-east Queensland where we enjoy a fairly good climate all year round, it’s cheaper to build here obviously than it would be in one of the northern states of the USA where they have really cold winters and they might require heating in the winter.

So that would add additional cost for what they do. Or in the southern states of Australia for example right down in Tasmania and Victoria, your building costs will be different there than what it will be in a place like south-east Queensland or for example in Texas or Florida USA.

So those figures at pretty hard to be definite about but you’d be looking around about $20,000. If you wanted to get someone to come and build that for you, that same kind of thing, as a turnkey option, it might cost you $50,000. Its a very difficult thing to put a price on it, I have to be honest.

Ecofilms: It would be a floating a floating raft, deep water cultures system?

Murray Hallam:  That would be a part of it. We have what we call our FloMedia system which is a combination of both floating raft technology and also media bed technology and one of two other little things began to throw in the people really enjoy finding out about when the course runs, that will help you grow all sorts of things in your systems and grow very well and make sure that you utilize every little bit of that beautiful natural ecosystem nutrient that is produced by the system. That’s very important I think. To get a good cross-section of all the different crops that you can grow and grow in your local area. We’ve had some experience with some farmers now in the USA particularly, that are told us that they can sell all they can grow but the difficulty they have is that the customers want more than just lettuce or just tomatoes or just carrots.

They want to be able to buy a variety of things that are grown in the Aquaponics system. So its become very obvious to me that we need to be able to produce a whole lot of variety of quality vegetables if we’re going to successfully sell locally and produce and run a truly local business.

Ecofilms: So just getting back to FlowMedia at this is the a lot of interest in what it is exactly because it’s a combination as I understand it of floating raft and gravel media systems so that you can run different sorts of crops. Is it two systems split or are they somehow joined together and work off one pump?

Murray Hallam: No they are joined together and work with one pump. We spent quite a long time working out the parameters of how to do the plumbing so that the water distribution is done correctly and that the nutrient distribution is done correctly so that everything works really nicely in one harmonious system and can be run of just one very small low wattage pump.

That is the key to the whole thing. Keeps a running cost right down, but make sure we have maximum efficiency running through the whole system.

Ecofilms: And will you be teaching people FlowMedia in your Courses?

Murray Hallam: Absolutely yes.

Ecofilms: So this is something that really nobody has cracked yet. Would that be right to say?

Well there are lots of people that are dabbling in it right now. There’s a lot of interest around. Just fascinates me. We’ve been playing around with it for more than three years and working out – making sure we know exactly how it should and shouldn’t work and just in the last six months, I guess, there’s been an explosion of interest in what some are terming hybrid systems because people are beginning to realize that to take all the nutrient out, to take all the waste material out, the fish poo, take it out of the system and basically discarding it, it’s not very smart.

Because there’s a whole lot of great nutrient and minerals locked up in that fish poop. To take it out and throw it away is pretty silly – which is what happens in a typical floating raft system. It’s taken away. Some people are a bit more clever, will treat it and try reintroduced nutrients back into the system but that is another job you have to do. Another process you have to do.  Whereas the way we do FlowMedia is it’s all done in the system and there’s no waste and the nutrients are retained in the system and the system just works absolutely beautifully.

Ecofilms: Tell us about your Australian Course. When is that happening and how long is it run for?

Murray Hallam: Our Australian course will happen on the 5 March, through to the eighth. Its four days and it’s pretty intensive actually. We’re going to have a difficult job keeping it down to four days. I reckon we could do six days really. But four days is what it is and we going to cover all subjects we talked about earlier. The ones we’re doing in the USA in Florida in April we actually are going to run two sessions.  Two identical four-day sessions because we’re anticipating the number of bookings will be quite high and in the middle of that, we’re going to have one-day session was a very clever people from the Rocky Mountains who have worked out how to build really good greenhouses for cold climates. Because in America in the northern states they have quite cold winters and building a greenhouse becomes very important to get it right because if you don’t do it right you can cost you a fortune in heating bills and it just doesn’t work too well.

These people are really quite clever and theyre going to be giving us their time in the middle. Great thing to do. I’m looking forward to that myself actually, not that we have a problem with really cold winters where I live, but what a great thing to learn about. How to build an economical arm greenhouse that works well in really cold climates.

Ecofilms: Well thank you Murray I think the fact that you’ve given us that little tip about how much people can spend on building their own small-scale commercial aquaponics system is a tremendous incentive. I think most people can find that sum of money if they were close to retirement age. I’ve always thought one of the beauties of Aquaponics is that all the food is almost at waist level. I always like the fact that I don’t have to bend over and pick things and it’s just an easy stroll. I feel lazy saying that but it’s one of the advantages I think.

Murray Hallam: Well is another little advantage that comes with that as well. We’ve noticed that food is grown at waist height has a much lower pest problem than food grown on the ground believe it or not. Now I’m not quite sure why that is, but it’s a much cleaner food, much better food and it’s just fun to work with.

Just backtracking a little bit to the cost of doing an Aquaponics system, we must stress that that’s assuming you already have some land and you already would have a place to do it in. If you have to go and buy land then obviously it’s a whole different kettle of fish. (no pun intended)

Ecofilms: When it comes to selling your produce as a general rule what should people be focused on? What advice would you tell most people who are considering doing a commercial Aquaponics course?

Murray Hallam: The first thing we say to people who contact us, the first thing you need to do is work out where and how you’re going to sell your produce. It’s not good enough to say, “Oh, Uncle Fred has a fruit and vegetable shop and he said he’ll buy it from me.”

You’ll probably find Uncle Fred won’t when the crunch comes.

You can’t go into this with just some loose idea that because you’ve grown a better product that people rush to your door and buy it. They may not necessarily. You have to have a good plan which we can help you formulate that plan in these courses. We will help you formulate that plan. Something will work for you in your area and you really need to sort that out long before you start worrying about how big the greenhouse is going to be or how big the pumps going to be. Those are all easy things to solve.

The big issue is where and how am I going to sell it, because this is a premium product and you must obtain for it a premium price. If you’re just going to send it off to a local bulk wholesale place you’ll get very poor prices and you won’t make a living.

Further Information

Murray has teamed up with Dr Wilson Lennard to present his Australian Aquaponics for Profit Course in March 5-8 in Brisbane Australia

Green Acres Aquaponics Farming Course  April 2012 in Florida USA