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

Murray Hallam believes we need to eat clean unpolluted fish and vegetables. Choosing the right tank is something we need to pay more attention to.

Choosing a tank suitable for aquaponics is probably a no brainer. Many people grab the first thing that suits their budget, but not all tanks are the same and some can positively damage your health and kill all your fish. We take a look at choosing the best tanks for your budget with Aquaponics guru Murray Hallam. The good, the bad and the ugly. Got 15 minutes? Its worth a listen.

Listen to the Audio Podcast

Murray Hallam speaks to Frank Gapinski of Ecofilms about choosing the right tank for your system. 15 minutes mp3 file

Transcript

Ecofilms: Murray – Tanks!  Its one of the things that most people when they get interested in  aquaponics – start looking around for a tank and I know you’ve got your favourite tanks that you like to talk about but there are many ways of putting fish into a system. Run through some of the various methods people use to get started in aquaponics?

Murray Hallam: Well there’s various levels that you can start at aquaponics. There are people – the do-it-yourselfers and they want to be able to use some kind of recycled material if possible and then there are those who would rather buy something that is nice and new to work with and build a quite secure food production system. So they’re the two ends of the scale. Then there’s all kinds of alternatives in between.

Ecofilms: Because you’ve got your own favourite method. You are a kit manufacturer. What are your kit systems made from?

Fibreglass tanks will last 50 years

Murray Hallam: We manufacture ours from fiberglass.  Marine grade fiberglass, because we believe it’s a very durable material and if you’re going to make a food production system then it should be good. Thats what we believe because the most important thing in our daily lives is making sure that we can have food security and most people who come to aquaponics are usually interested in food security and food purity.

These are the two top priorities, so we believe that fiberglass being a very durable material and its also inert – chemically neutral once cured, is an excellent material to use for your tanks and your troughs in aquaponics systems.

But having said that, there is obviously a lot of other materials that you can use that are quite good.

Ecofilms: One of the things that most people don’t concern themselves with is the very fact that aquaponics is not here for a day or a week or a month. You’re going to be running a system that has to produce food for well over six months, a year, three years or five years. We’ve had our system now running non-stop for three years and I can tell you it’s just pumping out an enormous amount of food. But  as those years roll by you start worrying and thinking to yourself “Gee, I wonder what’s in the tank that could perhaps leach out and become a health issue?”  So I think that it’s something people have to think about when they choose a tank and what’s inside the actual surface of that tank?

Murray Hallam: That is true and that’s why we like fiberglass – marine grade fibreglass so much because we know that it’s a 50 year product. Its infinitely repairable and it is definitely chemically inert whereas a lot of other plastic type products may well leach things into your system. Just think of the fish for example, they’re going to be living in a tank for at least a year and if there’s anything leaching into the tank any nasty little chemicals – minute quantities thereof, then your fish have a whole year to pick that up and absorb it.  So theoretically you could be worse off using a low-grade tank and low-grade troughs that may be cheap to buy in the first place but  you could be worse off in the end. You are trying to escape from the chemical input into your life by doing aquaponics and you can very easily jump right into a worse end in this situation simply by not getting good quality materials in your setup.

Ecofilms: Murray what about PVC plastic? There are some kit manufacturers that are making them. What’s your view on PVC?

Murray Hallam:  I think it’s okay provided you make sure its new and its food safe and it’s not something that is being reclaimed. Generally speaking,  the PVC tanks and troughs that are black in colour  - now this is not always true, generally speaking, they made from reclaimed plastics and therefore you never entirely sure whats in them. Coloured ones are generally okay provided they are stamped and approved as food safe.

Rainwater tanks can be modified for Aquaponics

Ecofilms: What about people that immediately go to hardware stores and look for tanks that have another use – say rainwater tanks here in Australia?  Whats your view on repurposing rainwater tanks for Aquaponics?

Murray Hallam:  Rainwater tanks are quite okay. They’re actually here in Australia anyway, they’re made from good food safe plastic material and are quite good. Its a good use for a rainwater tank not the cheapest (method) really but it’s it to good use for a rainwater tank to turn it into an Aquaponics system. Lots of people cut them in half, use the bottom half for the fish tank –depending on the size you want to get of course. Its a good way to go.

This bathtub aquaponics system is a low tech solution

Ecofilms: And bathtubs? There seems to be a lot of people that go to the local rubbish tip looking for bathtubs. Can you tell us whats your view on bathtubs?

Murray Hallam:   Well its a good way to get started. If you’re a person who doesn’t have much money to spend at this particular point when you decide to start in Aquaponics, then putting together a system out of a few bathtubs is not a bad way to go. I wouldn’t want to think it would be a permanent idea but it’s certainly a good way to get started and to just feel how it goes and how it works and to just see if you can do at your place. Most people that we’ve encountered that start down the bath tub route, end up upgrading to something better and that’s not a bad way to go.

Usually old bathtubs, depending on how old they are of course, are enameled. They could be metal with an enamel coating which of course is inert and food safe. There are plastic tubs, some of which are cheap and nasty made of materials that are not food safe and then the better quality fibreglass bathtubs are quite good. Once again, if you’re going to use recycled materials you need to find out what kind of material it is and if you have any doubt do not use it! Simple as that.

Ecofilms: And this brings is down to the minimum size of the tank. In your view offering the best outcome – is there an ideal size in gallons or cubic meters? The dimensions of the tank that will give you the most stability? Is there something along those lines that you’d recommend to an average backyarder who wants to grow food for their family. What sort of minimum or maximum size would you recommend?

Murray Hallam:  Look, I’ve seen people build quite successful little tiny aquaponics systems out of a couple of old aquariums and make it work but the more water you have in the system, the more stability you are having in both pH and temperature and that becomes more and more important for your fish that you have pH stability and temperature stability. As much can. So we have found in our part of the world – south-east Queensland that a tank of about 1000 L or 250 gallons of water is a good size because of that size you do have a measure of stability in both those parameters and thats important because if you spend the whole time chasing pH, trying to keep it right and also difficulties with large temperature swings when is a hot day, the temperature of the water goes up – if you got a small volume of water then your water temperature will tend to follow the temperature of the day. Whereas in a much larger volume of water – it takes a lot longer to change that temperature which makes your fish a lot happier and a lot more contented, and your plants too by the way.

Huge temperature swings in the water is not good for your plants. Roots zone temperature can become very important in growing your plants successfully.

Concrete tanks are very alkaline

Ecofilms: What about those people that want to do it themselves and use concrete? They fill it up with water and then throw fish in.  What you say to them?

Murray Hallam:  Well they’ll have problems with their pH.  Concrete has got a lot of lime in it and even old concrete tanks still have a lime content which will tend to make your system alkaline and we need to have our system at around about 6.5 pH for everything to be ideal. If  you have a concrete tank you’ll find very hard to keep it down below seven. Very difficult indeed, so if people want to build larger concrete tank out of something like concrete blocks, then they should be prepared to coat it with something. Some kind of paint that once again is inert and safe for human use, potable water use, but that adds more expense.

stainless steel milk vat

Ecofilms: As an alternative you can get stainless steel, copper or zinc tanks. Say someone found one in in a garage sale or auction and they came home with a large copper tank. Would that be suitable?

Murray Hallam:   No definitely no copper. Its not good for fish. As we know, they paint the bottoms of boats with copper paints in order to repel fish and crustaceans and barnacles and the like, so it’s not good for our fish to be in a copper tank. Likewise zinc, in fact zinc or galvanized tanks are poisonous to fish. Quite definitely so. Having said that, some of the newer products that we see used in Australia to make metal tanks – one that is called zinc-alum is not so bad because that actually has a very fine plastic coating over it.  Then we talk about stainless steel tanks? I’ve seen customers find old milk vats for example from a disused milk factory and stainless steel tanks are really very good actually. If you are going to build one from new then expect to go a visit your bank manager because they are very expensive.

Ecofilms: Now you recently released a DVD called DIY Aquaponics where you make a CHOP2 system from IBC tanks or tote tanks as they call them in America. What about those sort of systems? Are they quite safe?

Murray Hallam: It’s really a good way to go actually for a recycled materials usage, to be able to use those IBC’s or tote tanks. They’re available almost everywhere in the world you’ll find them.  Just be careful that you find ones that have not had toxic chemicals in them because obviously agricultural chemicals are transported in them. The tanks if you obtain them from the first user, they will still have a label on them showing what was transported in them. If you get one that’s had some safe material like for example some kind of acid that washes out very easily with water, there are a number of ones we often obtain for customers that have had pool chlorine in them. Tthat’s quite good as it washes out quite well.

Other ones have been used to transport bulk food substances, like orange concentrate, orange fruit juice concentrate on that kind of thing.  They’re quite good to use.  You’ll need to paint or protect the IBC tank somehow from sunlight because the plastic material that is used will eventually break down with UV light so they are not a long-term option in that regard unless you go to the trouble to make sure that they’re shielded from direct sunlight.

IBC or Tote tanks are an economical way to get started

Ecofilms: What about  people that they want to use plastic sheeting? They would dig a hole in the backyard and there are going to lay sheeting over it and somehow cover it over stones and so on and make a pond Aquaponics system. What’s your view on plastic sheeting?

Murray Hallam: Well actually its not a bad way to go. Once again provided you buy good-quality plastic pond liner. Or a dam liner. Make sure it is suitable for potable water or human water use. Its not a bad way to go. You can build a container of timber for example or lumbar.  Get the shape you want and then line it with the plastic liner. Its not a bad way to go and its reasonably economical as well. On the downside, when you’re putting your media into it, your gravel media into it – you need to be careful not to puncture the lining. If you’re going to keep crustaceans and for example, or some kind of Yabby or claw-fish, they might tend to bite holes in it which is not good, but for ordinary fish like Jade Perch or Silver Perch, Tilapia,  those kind of finfish, it works really quite well.

Ecofilms: I wonder what sort of life you’d expect to get out of a pond liner?

Murray Hallam: Well the sun is a marvelous thing. It will break anything down eventually. I would once again wanted to be protected from direct sunlight and make sure that it is housed in a good greenhouse or the like. Most of those pond liners that I have seen have got an estimated life of about 10 years. That’s provided their protected in the appropriate manner and they don’t become punctured or in any way compromised like that. But it’s not a bad way to go. We’ve seen commercial systems. We were in America recently visiting some different farms and we found that they had made their troughs out of timber or  lumber and lined them with the plastic liner that we’ve just described. It works quite well

Ecofilms: So you’d recommend if you’re building a small-scale commercial floating raft system you’d recommend that you did it in timber and plastic liner?

Murray Hallam: Its certainly one way to do it. That’s for sure. It’s quite able to be done by people with moderate skills. Its not a high skill thing and so it can be done by people quite well.

More: Murray Hallam on Commercial Aquaponics. How much should it cost you to build a system? His answers may astound you.

Green Sky Growers futuristic plants

The first thing they tell you at Green Sky Growers when you enter their greenhouse is “Don’t try this at home!”
And you wouldn’t want to try it at home if you saw how intensively they grow their fish.

Growing fish intensively at great volume is fraught with difficulties even for the experts – especially if any of the machinery breaks down and the dissolved oxygen in the system drops sharply – the fish will die very quickly.

So what do the big boys with all the toys do?

Especially if they also happen to own a lot of futuristic whirligig type industrial conveyer belt machinery – vertical white metal cylinders that look really cool silently moving around this impressive rooftop garden?

They have all the cool stuff of course because they are also owned by Aquatic Eco-Systems the supplier of tanks and hi-tech fish machinery to the US aquaculture industry so they can afford to experiment and push the envelope a little as well as experimenting in futuristic aquaponics scenarios.

We shot this video last September while touring the facility with the newly formed Aquaponics Association. Sylvia Bernstein and her team did a great job organizing this event and showing a variety of different aquaponic systems. So the tour was very brief but there are some benefits in getting a brief interview on how Green Sky Growers work their system.

Here are the basics:

• Stocking ratio: 1lb of fish per gallon of water
• 38 – 42% fish high protein fish feed dispensed through auto feeders
• Fish are graded through 3 x large tanks to maturity
• Fish are purged in salt water to improve taste over a week.
• Beneficial Insects are encouraged to control pests
• Liquid Oxygen used at a rate of DO 7-8 in intensive fish tanks
• Mixed plants are grown based on seasonal variability and conditions.
• Introduction of different fish species suitable for aquaponics, Tilapia, Barramundi, Sturgeon, Ornamentals, Trout, Alligator gar and even Jade Perch are to be introduced to their system.
• Highly efficient commercial drum filters used for water quality.

Alligator gar as an aquaponics fish? If you’re wondering what an alligator gar looks like then consider a fish that looks like it was crossed with a crocodile. Just don’t put your hand in the tank.

Yep, there’s always something new to learn about Aquaponics.

If anyone knows the name of the guy explaining their setup in the YouTube video above – let us know and we’ll credit him.

Living in the cold snows of Connecticut and wishing to do aquaponics doesn’t stop Rob Torcellini of Bigelow Brook Farm from building an innovative greenhouse.
You can watch Rob’s construction methods and learn a few tips along the way from this well documented 9 part Youtube series that takes you through every step, triumphs and failures in constructing this 1200 square foot Geodesic Greenhouse with an optional rocket-stove mass heater to keep the fish and plants nice and happy through the cold of winter.

This series will take you from the site design, through early tests, construction and heating. Don’t let the shaky camera-work at the start worry you. It gets better as the show continues.

Well done Rob. Looking forward to see the fish and plants arrive.

Recently we were talking to someone who wishes to remain anonymous who say they invested more than $250,000 in their commercial aquaponics business and it wasn’t working to plan. Sure they grew plants. The fish grew fine. They had 1,000 Jade perch in their tanks that were coming up for harvest. The system was running so well that they claimed they could grow lettuce in two weeks for market! They were able to get $1.20 per lettuce head wholesale at the food co-op. Although they didn’t have organic certification – their aquaponically grown herbs and vegetables were in demand as the co-op only sold organic food to their fussy customers at a premium price.

They had trialled all sorts of plants over the first year and the system worked fine but it had problems. Amongst the every day issues they encountered from high summer heat (52C) in the greenhouse and occasional bug infestations attacking their crops. Their main complaint was a major problem that doesn’t make rounds to often  in Aquaponic discussions – plants wilting.

Wilting

Some plants are prone to wilting in high heat but the wilting they were talking about was at harvest. The owners had grown a large crop of Basil and blamed Aquaponics as the culprit. The plants after all had it too easy. The Basil plants were full of water with their roots submersed in the stuff all the time. It was a DWC floating raft system with heavily oxygenated water so the plants were very happy indeed – until harvest day. Then the plants flopped over and wilted when picked. They had lost a whole crop to wilting.

Harvest

A little closer investigation revealed that the owners had decided to let their Basil grow nice and big and then when they decided to harvest the plants out,  they also removed the roots and cut up the stems into marketable sizes and wrapped the whole thing in plastic and threw it into the truck to take to market the next day. They didn’t have a cold room so shelf storage of the product became a big problem. They had also tried adding a slurp of water into the parcels to give the plants a “drink” but that method didn’t work either!  All they had was a pile of wilted plants that no one would buy.

They had failed to understand the way a plant works. It requires its root system to stay alive!

Thats why you will see a lot of happy hydroponically grown Basil plants in the market-place selling with their net-pots – and roots still intact.

Each tower has a regulator attached to adjust nutrient drip.

Growing Basil in Vertical Towers

Here’s a clever way to grow Basil in vertical towers. Aleece Landis the Duckponics lady we featured before or as she is also known as TCLynx on Aquaponics forums demonstrated to us  her Basil herb arrangement grown in zip towers and also a curious method for capturing rain water in saucers to top up the towers. She has high alkaline water where she lives so capturing rain water with a neutral pH is a good way to keep her pH stable. There’s also a little bonus feature on Aleece’s method of growing Loofa, a type of fibrous gourd that when dried makes a great sponge that she also sells.

Watch the YouTube clip below:

Aleece could take her Basil towers to market and bring the whole thing back, including the plants she didn’t sell. She could then hook her towers back up to her aquaponics system and away it goes for another week. No wilting. No dead plants. Vertical towers are a great idea that can also grow all sorts of herbs and climbing plants like – strawberries.

Making your own Basil or Strawberry tower is not hard if you run a pump with enough head to pump the height of your towers. The towers are ordinary storm-water drainage pipes or PVC tubing wide enough to accommodate gravel or hydroton. A series of holes are cut into the tower to accommodate spaces for the seedlings. Placing the tower at opposite end of your auto-siphon allows good nutrient flow through the entire growbed feeding your plants.

Check out this post on making your own strawberry tower.

Have you ever got up in the morning, went to inspect your aquaponics system and discovered something has been nibbling at your seedlings?

A comment by Catryna today inspired this post.

“My main interest in Aquaponics is that our family lives in the rurals of San Diego county, California.” she said.  “The rodents underground and above ground decimate anything you grow and that includes fruit trees. So, having an Aquaponics system enclosed in a greenhouse is a win/win system; no access by the critters and year round food and fish. You can’t beat it.”

Well our system is not under cover. Its out in the open in a courtyard but enclosed by the house, gate and fence. But just a few weeks ago I also began noticing that the fresh new seedlings I planted out the day before were all neatly cut right down to the base of the stalk the next morning. Something was out in the night munching and crunching on our seedlings.

I immediately thought it might be a stray possum. We have seen them occasionally at night moving around in the trees leaping from branch to branch. Some people are then forced to put chicken wire over their growbeds to protect their crops. But really – who wants to do that?!

I decided to make the possums life difficult to land on our tanks by trimming any over hanging growth from touching our fence, making life more difficult for the little critters from landing on the fence, scurrying down a rope and into the grow-bed. Surely this would solve the problem by eliminating any way for them to easily reach the fence – I thought.

Wrong.

"Apart from a green tree frog sitting on the autosiphon everything else looked okay."

I replanted the system with some nice succulent Cos Lettuce convinced that the problem was now solved. The next day every one of the dozen seedlings was trimmed off straight down to the base like the little blighters had mini chainsaws rather than incisor teeth!

I looked around the fish tank and growbeds trying to figure out how these creatures were getting in to the beds. The grow-beds are at waist level. They thief would have to either abseil from the roof down or use grappling hooks to climb up.

I put away any stray box, bucket or bin under the beds to eliminate any structure they could climb onto. Even power cords from the fish tank were examined. I had visions of these creatures like circus tightrope walkers doing their thing at night.

Nights became a mission of patrolling the system at night with flashlights like one of those NAZI camp guards looking for signs of infiltration. But apart from scaring the fish with the light beam and causing them to crash and leap around in the tank, no sound or movement could be detected.

Only the sounds of chirping crickets and the moon peeping from behind the cloud. It was getting quite mysterious.

The next morning with more lettuce eaten I decided to take a forensic look at the lettuce. I examined the way the thing had been eaten. Top growth of the lettuce was okay. The bottom leaves and the most tender side leaves where nibbled on. I began to suspect Rats in the Grow-bed.

Poisons were ruled out but I could use a bit of old fashioned technology.  The old trusty rat trap with a bit of bait on the end.

I placed a few traps around the side of the fish tank and one in the grow-bed just for fun.

Revenge will be mine. It will be sweet.

I slept well that night.

The next morning I examined the grow-beds. Nothing had been eaten. Apart from a green tree frog sitting on the auto-siphon everything else looked okay.

Nothing had been touched.

The fish looked happy and hungry. I looked around the sides of the tank. One trap was still set and untouched.

The other trap had caught a large rat.

Victory.

Ouch! Right across the nose too!

I left a few more traps set for the weeks ahead and only caught another one. For the rest of the time, the rat menace had abated. How they managed to climb up the beds – I’ll never know. Some people tell me rats can form a rat pyramid and climb on each others shoulders. Some say they can jump pretty high. However they did it will have to remain a secret that they take to the grave with them for my grow-beds now are undisturbed.

The tomatoes are booming and the lettuce is growing well and there is no more things that go crunch in the night in my little part of paradise.

However – spare a thought for all those people and tourists that occasionally visit Sydney!

Don’t sleep on the park bench.

What creatures disturb your grow-bed?

Where did I put my other sock?

Filters seem to be the bane of many people’s lives as they seek out many creative ways to remove fish effluent and waste from the water returning back to the fish tank.

Every day on Aquaponic forums people become obsessed with removing waste and seek out many ways to build extra plumbing into their system – large drum clarifiers, swirl filters, particulate filters, settling tanks to trap solids and prevent them from coming back.

Dirty water – be gone!

Solids are removed to make the water sparkling clean and habitable for the fish. The plants are fine. Remember they like the dirt. But the fish – the poor old fish look glum swimming around in effluent. Some fish can cope with living in a sewer – but eventually all fish succumb to disease and a nasty thing called Death.

So fish require some degree of filtration to be happy and prevent various diseases from breaking out.

So to what degree of filtration do you need in your aquaponics system? When should you start to worry?

In normal media based systems. Systems with hydroton or gravel in the growbeds growing vegetables, these become your primary bio-filtration mechanism. With a good assortment of composting worms and plants sucking up the nutrients, the grow bed media filter out the waste as the water passes through the media. This becomes your primary method of filtration and does a pretty good job of solids elimination.

A lot of fish matter waste can be seem deposited where the water trickles onto the grow-bed. It look s like a carpet of thick brown sludge – fish poo! The more fish you put into your tank – the more fish poo comes out the other end.

Its not rocket science.

For most people that lightly stock their tanks with fish – filtration will never become an issue. Water quality always becomes an issue when people look into their tank and think they can add another twenty or thirty more fish because the tank looks empty with the way the fish are all huddled together  in a group.

Stock to your level of Filtration

Then as the weeks progress, they begin to notice the water quality becoming less clear. Lots of tiny particles are swirling around the tank, especially when the fish are startled and shoot around the tank raising a cloud. Fine particle matter is stirred up and the water looks like a hazy dusty cloud of fecal matter. The rule of thumb with keeping fish and filtration is to stock fish to your level of filtration. If you only have a very small grow bed and that is your primary filter mechanism – then you need to reduce your fish load or increase your filtration system. Add extra grow-beds to accommodate the increased fish load.

A build up of Organic Matter spells disaster

A build up of fish waste in your tank along with uneaten fish food, algae and organic matter if allowed to accumulate will affect the dissolved oxygen (DO) in your tank. As organic matter decays it produces carbon dioxide and ammonia. If you allow a lot of sludge to settle in your tanks, the dead matter will decompose anaerobically (without oxygen) and produce methane and hydrogen sulfide, which is very toxic to fish. You’re on a downward spiral if you allow your system to get out of hand. So some form of maintenance and water quality control needs to be implemented if you stock your aquaponics system with too many fish. Many seasoned aquaponics people advocate a lighter load in your fish stocking density for that very reason. Sometimes less is more. Try to keep the natural balance of your system in harmony.

Another reason why solids are removed in the commercial Floating Raft method of Aquaponics is to prevent sludge adhering to the roots of the plants which can result in poor plant growth. Plants grow better in heavily oxygenated water but the roots of the plants should not be coated with a heavy lining of sludge.

UVI Clarifier

 UVI Clarifier

The University of the Virgin Islands (UVI) developed a system of conical tanks or clarifiers to trap solids in their tanks through a couple of added baffles. The water column along with the solids would enter the tank and would “drop out” or fall to the base of a conical bottom to be trapped and later pumped out. A series of baffle obstacles would make suspended particles easier to trap as the water flowed down, up and out through the tank.

The particles would eventually coat the pipes and fittings of the tanks with a thick sludge which meant periodic and laborious cleaning.

Someone at the University had a bright idea and would occasionally throw a few tilapia fish into the clarifier tank to keep the pipes from blocking! In a commercial aquaponics system, Tilapia produce a lot of fish waste that needs to be eliminated from the system.

As good as clarifiers are – accounting for 59% of solids removal – they still cannot remove all the solid matter. A further series of tanks stuffed with netting are used to trap solids before the water flows on its way to the raft system growing the vegetables.

Swirl Filter

Despite how they are named – try not to think of the swirl filter like a agitated washing machine spinning water around rapidly. Quite the reverse. Swirl filters, rotate the water very very gently in a sweeping arc. Remember the water needs to move very slowly with the outlet pipe located in the center of the tank,  just at the surface to gently capture water and send it on its way. The solids have plenty of time to sink as they gently “swirl” in a grand  almost motionless spiral arc that traps matter and gently allows it to fall to the bottom of the tank.

Swirl Filter

In the image to the left, two polystyrene floats are shown moving in an arc at the edge of the tank to better illustrate the principle. Below in the water you can see the spiral arms of the settled solids. The principles of swirl filters and particulate filters is illustrated well in the Aquaponics Secrets DVD.

How much solids should you remove in Aquaponics?

Removing all the solids in an Aquaponics system is a difficult business unless you employ a large expensive commercially provided  centrifugal drum filter that is designed to spin water and eliminate particles as fine as the width of a human hair. Your talking microns here and even then some fine particles wont be eliminated. You can set up any number of solids capturing tanks and settling devices and never fully eliminate the problem because a lot of the suspended particles are trapped in the water column – never to settle!

HOW DRUM FILTERS WORK

• The rotating drum is mounted on a frame with outer micron filter panels. The filter panel can be either polyester or stainless steel cloth that is of a specific micron porosity.
• Fish waste water with solid matter particles enter the Drum Filter from the inside the spinning drum.
•  Solid waste particles are captured on the filter screens.
• Water escapes through the filter screen.
•  A float level switch or timer initiates filter screen rinse that washes away solid matter to another tank where it is collected and disposed of. 

But don’t get trapped in throwing out the baby with the bath water or obsessing over solids removal.

As solids undergo decomposition by microorganisms,  nutrients essential to plant growth are released to the water, a necessary process known as mineralization.
Mineralization is the very essence of plant growth and if you removed all the solids you would then have essentially an aquaculture system devoid of nutrients – not an aquaponics system. You would need to supplement your plants with external nutrients because without sufficient solids for mineralization, more nutrient supplementation is required. This would then add to your operating expenses and increase management complexity in running such a system.

Aquaponics is an eco-system that many people don’t fully comprehend or understand.

A balance between keeping the fish healthy and the plants thriving is essential. Clean water is essential and so are the nutrients trapped within it.