Backyard Aquaculture/Fish Farming

Not unless you are adding pure oxygen or ozone. Mechanical aeration without high pressure can only raise the O2 level to 100%. Aeration also allows bad gases to escape. That's almost as important as adding O2.

As far as having too much current the answer is yes that is possible but I've seen Rainbows raised in tanks that were really spinning.

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"Do you believe in the devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?" Hobbs
"I'm not sure that man needs the help." Calvin

I like this idea. I have a small silo. What could I reasonably do in a season?

If I hung lights over it what percentage of the feed could I reasonable expect to be in the form of insects?

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Flaming Xtian
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
Mahatma Gandhi


Libertarindependent

That depends on the size of the silo. When you raise fish in tanks you either have to have a biofilter plus 10% replacement water or enough water to flow through the tank.

I'm not sure how much insects would contribute but I would plan on 100% feeding of pellets with insects as a bonus. I know a guy who picks up roadkilled deer and puts them over his ponds for maggots. I doubt that it produces enough to completely replace pelleted food.

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"Do you believe in the devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?" Hobbs
"I'm not sure that man needs the help." Calvin

Is there a way to calculate number of fish (or pounds of fish) per cubic foot of water?

__________________
Flaming Xtian
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
Mahatma Gandhi


Libertarindependent

What worked for us is a half pound of fish per gallon of water...we raised catfish that we would harvest at a pound or so, so in our 700 gallon stock tank, we would stock at a max of 350 fish. The numbers for other varieties of fish may vary. Using this formula, we could grow tomatoes, peppers and other fruit bearing plants.

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Hillbilly and Proud of It!

It depends on the fish species and how well your system processes waste but 1/2 lb/gallon sounds like a pretty good system. Time also figures into the equation.

Razorback, did you have to add fertilizer to the water?

__________________
"Do you believe in the devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?" Hobbs
"I'm not sure that man needs the help." Calvin

If I Understocked could the operation be less intensive as far as water replacement, aeration, etc?

__________________
Flaming Xtian
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
Mahatma Gandhi


Libertarindependent

I once had a catalog for fish farming supplies . At this time I can't remember the name . They had a bug zapper that just stunned the bugs & they fell into the water alive for fish feed . The zapper hung on a cable or whatever above the pond & had a photocell that turned it on at dusk & off at daylight . A google search would probably find one .

Fishhead,
We used liquid kelp in the past, but we haven't used anything in the way of fertilizer in the last two years and haven't noticed a difference. The biggest thing we found to benefit tomatoes and peppers was stocking density of our fish. The higher number of fish, the better it was fruiting plants. The lower the density, spinach, lettuce and basil were better choices.

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Hillbilly and Proud of It!

Yes but unless you go really low you will need those components.

To figure out weight of fish per gallon just estimate your finished weight of fish and then plug that into the gallons of the tank. Ex. 1/4 lb harvest weight fish means you can have 1 fish/gallon to reach 1/4 lb/gallon finish weight. 2,000 fish in a 2,000 gallon tank.

The gravel or substrate in the plant trays acts like a biofilter so the more trays the more plants you have taking up nutrients and the more gravel providing substrate for bacterial growth the more fish you can have per gallon.

Remember that lifting water is energy expensive so you want to keep that to an absolute minimum. With a 1 hp paddlewheel I was able to push about 10,000 gallons/minute. That same 1 hp would only lift about 200 gallons/minute if I lifted it a foot.

__________________
"Do you believe in the devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?" Hobbs
"I'm not sure that man needs the help." Calvin

Fishhead,

Do you need to use the gravel or substrate? I was leaning forwards using Hydroponics or even Aeroponics for my plants, and have just recently saw that raising fish seems to be a do-able thing without having huge ponds / lakes, as I once thought. So this is putting a twist into my plans, not a bad thing, just need to learn even more. LOL

The plan was to suspend the plants in the tubes like any other Hydroponic system. So can I use the fish tank's water to feed the plants and then return it to the tank? Something like a closed loop, but with adding fresh water to replace what the plants consumed?

BTW, I was thinking of raising something where around 200 lbs of Tilapia or maybe trout. Personal / give to friends use, not thinking large scale.

You Paddlewheel, how do you have that set up? Something you designed / made yourself or manufactured?

Thanks,

SirDude

When I raised plants hydroponically I used buckets of gravel and flooded the buckets each day but I have seen systems where plants were suspended in liquid. I think the later requires some kind of aeration to provide oxygen to the roots.

The paddlewheel was for a 90' artificial river I built to spawn chubs.

__________________
"Do you believe in the devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?" Hobbs
"I'm not sure that man needs the help." Calvin

Thanks, so the paddlewheel was just to "move" the water within it's area and you didn't need to pump it from one pond to the another, etc. Cool.

There's a restaurant not too far off on I-80 or I-88 in north-central IL (Fisherman Inn restaurant Elburn,IL) that farm-raises Trout and Salmon. I think that was the first place I saw (close up) where someone was trying to make a river type environment. They even had the step-style platforms for the Salmon. Never could figure out where that was leading too. It was just a long run, that just ended into the middle of their pond. I guess the Salmon once done spawning got dumped right back into the pond??? Talk about anti-climax, climb something a hundred times your body height only to drop off back to where you started. LOL

Anyway, Thanks for sharing the pictures, very cool.

The paddlewheel was to create the current needed to stimulate spawning and to aerate the eggs in the pebble nests they build. The white PVC pipe holds up a divider that goes the length of the raceway but with a space at each end for the water to turn and head the other direction.

__________________
"Do you believe in the devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?" Hobbs
"I'm not sure that man needs the help." Calvin

I have been trying to get started for a while with the fish. I wanted to get my equipment around cheaply so I didn't have to go buy anything big on a short notice. I have 4-4'X 15' dia. tanks from a grain bin sections, 2-500 gallon plastic tanks, 1- 4x4x3insulated cooler box and assorted cone tanks and 60 gal drums to start. I also have all of my hydroponic equipment so I can move into Aquaponics. I ordered some videos from Austrailia last night on aquaponics.

http://aquaponics.net.au/

They look to be very good and I like the way the guy puts things straight forward. He also grows worms in his AP system, a benefit for my soil planted gardens.
I would like to raise catfish and crapie in mine maybe goldfish for bait. ($1.25 each here)

Everything on hold till after a bit o knee surgery next week.

If you can sell them all bait goldfish would probably pay for your system over time.

__________________
"Do you believe in the devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?" Hobbs
"I'm not sure that man needs the help." Calvin

SirDude:

We also looked into using a fish stock tank for running hydro and aeroponics in greenhouse-style gardening. (We're hydro-aero buffs)

The problem with the idea is that fish do not produce enough fertilizer by themselves to keep anything but the most low-demand plants alive. (Think ONLY greens such as lettuce) Also, in an organic set-up such as that, you need the bacteria to break down the solids into useful nutrients for the plants. Such bacteria raise the Ph levels to between 7 and 8. Going above 6.2 in a hydro or aero set-up will nute-lock your plants.

We tried such a system both using NFT (Nutrient Film Technique) and pure aero, and both times it was a pure fight with the Ph. Not to mention those beneficial bacteria that are so wonderful for organic gardening and aquarium set-ups will create waste that clog up pumps and aeration stones.

This was simply using organic solutions from fish waste for nutrients. We would have never been able to keep fish alive in the Ph range needed for hydroponic plants. Nor could we have made a closed loop system out of it due to the necessity of adding nitrates, nitrites, and potassium to the solution to raise it to high enough levels for plant growth.

You MIGHT be able to get away with such a system using ebb and flow, but I seriously doubt it. Also, even with that system, you'd still be limited to growing only very low demand plants. Things like tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, etc., would be right out.

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Peace,
Caliann

"First, Show me in the Bible where it says you can save someone's soul by annoying the hell out of them." -- Chuck

Aquaculturists in this area use settling ponds to collect the waste from the farms. On a regular schedule the settled waste is pumped out to either a tank truck or a decanting pit. The liquid sludge in the tanks is applied directly to crop land. The dried waste from the pits is composted and then tilled into the soil before planting the crops.
I've used the composted manure on my garden for years as the only fertilizer and the garden is very bounteous. Not exactly aquaponics but it does make good use of the aquaculture "waste". The composted product looks and smells like dark rich soil with a slightly gritty texture from the snail shells. There are added benefits of no weed seeds and since the manure is from cold blooded animals, no pathogens that can affect people.

What a great idea!

CaliannG,

It's interesting in the timing of your response, just last night I was reading-up on some Aeroponics systems and came to a similar thought. I was thinking that, even though I want to grow plants AND raise fish, I will need to treat each tank differently.

The "fish tank" gets priority put on the fish, and only do what helps the fish grow. The "Plant tank / water" gets the priority put on the plants, and do what's best for their growth.

By reading all these posts, I can see there's plenty of "uses" for the "fish water" so it's not the end of the world. And in some ways, might make life a little easier. Since I wouldn't have to worry about the "what's good for the plants might be bad for the fish" kind of things.


Anyone have any thoughts on why most 'ponic users I see / read about mostly grow lettuce? Is that the best "starter crop" for newbies or is that the most profitable one for businesses that make it into the magazines? Other then reading about all the Weed that is grown hydro style, I hardly ever see anything else.