Rabbit manure as fish food?

RupertofOZ

A delicacy such as myself... may well be beyond your price range Chappo... :mrgreen:

and you'd have to catch me first... :lol:

Stuart Chignell

Boris01 wrote:

If youre going to convert rabbit poop to worms , you might aswell convert it to black soldier flies instead

Soldier fly maggots while easy to grow are very high in fat. Some are great especially for fat loving fish like trout but worms would be better for yabbies and many other fish.

Lucas

There is one good thing about rabbit manure, - it comes in "pellets" :wink:

But the most important thing is that rabbit manures (as well as goat m.) contain very high potassium, compared to others.

I have a question here too: apparently there is a method (they even call it Aquaponics at their site) where they mix manure to the fish poop- Unfortunately I lost the link to the website.
How common or popular is this,- I mean not only among members of this forum, but generally speaking?

RupertofOZ

I think you might be thinking of Will Power at "Growing Power"....

And yes I think they do mix a composted worm fertiliser into some pots which then wick in upper level aquaponic beds... the lower level is a continuous flow bed system with watercress... for filtration...

But from memory... most of their produce is actually grown outside of the aquaponics systems directly in composted mixes...

Having said that... they were reportedly going to switch another two greenhouses to aquaponics...

spiritrancho

An effort whould be made to seperate the rabit poo from their urine. Perhaps a screen under the cage and a tub for the urine. Now you could keep the rabbits off the FT and avoid the ammonia spike. Perhaps if your grow bed is large enough it could handle the extra source of nitrates. Mine is not.
Our soil is so poor I need all of the poop and urine I can get for composting to aid the dirt garden. In fact we now assist the compost with humanure with very good results. I do age it a year before use in the garden. I tried using goat and rabbit wastes as mulch for a couple of years with less than thrilling results.

Stuart Chignell

If you are going to use rabbit poo as fish food and then use the resulting waste from the fish to feed your plants why do you care if the urine gets into the system or not?

Will not the extra nutrients just be extra food for the plants? It would lower the density at which you could stock fish but then you would be getting rabbit as a trade off and not letting their waste go to waste.

KudaPucat

why not just have Rabbitponics then stu?
The idea was t keep the fish fed
the idea of the ponics is to keep the fish clean.
Now we're removing the fish?

Also, check you're PMs Stu!

TCLynx

If ya want to grow rabbits and have full fish Aquaponics and are looking for ways to help feed the rabbits, I would suggest...
Place a screen on an angle under the rabbit cages, this would allow the urine to drop straight through (put lots of sawdust down under there to absorb the urine and it will compost well.) The bunny berries will roll down the angel on the screen and you can have a worm bin (BSF whatever) where the rabbit manure falls. Collect worms/BSF larva to supplement the fish feed.

chainsaw

Good, now I know where to throw the dogs crap :lol:

KudaPucat

Am I to understand that worms wont appreciate the ammonia?

TCLynx

Generally worms would rather avoid too much ammonia or salts or too much liquid.

I once read a thread some one posted (not sure where though) but they were wanting to use worms to compost Humanure (I don't advise this, humanure should be hot composted.) Anyway, they noted that a crap a day in a worm bin along with the toilet paper seemed to work ok but if one were to start peeing in their worm bin, the worms would leave the bin even if it meant they died of dehydration outside the bin.

Stuart Chignell

KudaPucat wrote:

why not just have Rabbitponics then stu?
The idea was t keep the fish fed
the idea of the ponics is to keep the fish clean.
Now we're removing the fish?

Also, check you're PMs Stu!

I wasn't saying to remove the fish entirely. There are many forms of poly culture this would just be another variant. I think one of the reasons AP works so well is because of the diversity of stuff in the system. If that diversity was expanded systems may get even better. Also you wouldn't have to reduce your fish you could always increase your GBs. If you were feeding the rabbits from the GBs then this could be a good idea.

You good have a system with as many fish, ducks, turtles, rabbits, plants etc as you want you just have to balance the components.

ivansng

chainsaw wrote:

Good, now I know where to throw the dogs crap :lol:

If you are referring to dog crap into wormfarms, just in case you don't already know... If you worm your dog, you might kill the worms in the worm farm as well... you need to age the crap for a few months before putting them into the wormfarm... not sure about BSF...

Lucas

I'd rather suggest to keep dog crap apart (in a covered but not tightly closed bucket) and let flies lay eggs in it. Bacterial activity and maggot's digestion would then do a great job. You'd get a load of maggots to feed directly and decomposed manure you could have multiple use for.

Many years ago I used to have a Berger de Beauce and collected the crap from the front yard meadow and put in a bucket. Don't ask me why... but anyway, one day I discovered that the bucked (that actually got some rainwater) was CRAWLINGLY full with maggots. :roll:

BatonRouge Bill

Stuart Chignell wrote:

KudaPucat wrote:

why not just have Rabbitponics then stu?
The idea was t keep the fish fed
the idea of the ponics is to keep the fish clean.
Now we're removing the fish?

Also, check you're PMs Stu!

I wasn't saying to remove the fish entirely. There are many forms of poly culture this would just be another variant. I think one of the reasons AP works so well is because of the diversity of stuff in the system. If that diversity was expanded systems may get even better. Also you wouldn't have to reduce your fish you could always increase your GBs. If you were feeding the rabbits from the GBs then this could be a good idea.

You good have a system with as many fish, ducks, turtles, rabbits, plants etc as you want you just have to balance the components.

While rabbit urine is really strong/corrosive from the ammonia and high salts I agree on a polyculture of this type for use with fish/Prawn/Yabbies that you simply can't have very high stocking densities. And most rabbit pathogens are Respitorial , so there isn't as much risk as other warm blooded critters.

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