Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Does anyone know of any systems that are running pellet free?

I.e. systems running on home grown food only, such as duckweed, BSF, worms, kang kong etc and no bought food?

I guess thats a no...

I guess one of the problems with running a system totally pellet free is that you need to be able to balance the content of whatever feed you are giving to the fish so that it's providing not only the nutrient requirements of the fish but also the plants. If the majority of your feed is bits and pieces, then you have to fiddle quite a bit to get the mix right for good growth.

With many good quality aquaculture feeds it makes for a more simple case of, feed the fish and both fish and plants do very well..

known inputs leads to known outputs..

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www.backyardaquaponics.com
Bringing Food Production Home

"I guess thats a no..." exactly what I was thinking...

Granted, I really dont know enough about the various commercial feeds available, or about the nutritional needs of fish, but the whole feed issue really does seem to be a big elephant in the room...

While ever we are feeding wild caught fish to fish we cant really call what we do "sustainable"...

Probably an old discussion....but one thats not resolved at this stage ill bet...

I watched a show on the discovery channel called "Preppers" ( the show was about folks that feel we are headed to a collaspe) one of the families on there had a back yard pool converted into an aquaponics system, the raised chickens over the end of the pool the droppings went into the pool, the talipa would feed on the resulting age growth and they also looped the water around running through duckweed troughs, producing clean water at the end. The only input was chicken feed, but I believe they were going to raise worms in compost, so they might eventually get a complete "closed loop system" they ran all the pumps with solar power, and collected rain water to supplement the pool.
This was what got me looking into aquaponic systems and led me to start my own, although not as grand as that one.

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The only way to really have a closed loop system is to incorporate human waste back into the system, yeah? Otherwise minerals are leaving via sewage system and not being replaced. I think it's a really cool problem. I would love to create a closed loop system that takes human waste to produce fish food. I would imagine it would be very tricky to ensure that there is NO WAY pathogens could enter the food supply. I've had a lot of thoughts and not much time. Gotta get my first basic AP system off first.

To avoid pathogens, the loop could include composting and growing a crop between human and fish.

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its still all in my head.

Yep... I wouldn't have any warm blooded animal manure or feed any where near my system....

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Fresh By Nature - Distributor of Aquaponic Systems and Products in NSW
http://www.freshbynature.com.au

There is some evidence that some parasites benefit human health, this relates to the hygene hypothesis etc..

just putting it out that the need to fully screen out all pathogens may be a bit unneccesary

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Fabian's System

So they only ran it through duckweed troughs, they didn't grow human food crops with the water?

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www.backyardaquaponics.com
Bringing Food Production Home

They ate the duckweed straight from the trough and make smoothies from it too

Where is the puke icon when you need it!

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http://www.fishyplants.com

You laugh, but as fast as duckweed grows... If s#!7 hit the fan, I'd force my family to eat it until other crops were available... Or just wait till they got hungry enough

Yes it is, at least partly, thru regulations that only alows fish cutings (scrap/waste) to be used in the production of pellets.
So iff you/me/we purchase only pellets from serious producers, that obey those rules/regulations it's sustainable.

You missed the point where the duckweed is grown in water from chicken droppings.

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http://www.fishyplants.com

You missed the point where the duckweed is grown in water from chicken droppings.

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http://www.fishyplants.com

Heard an interesting talk on the radio the other day, a guy talking about the most abused and now worthless word in the english language at the moment.

"Sustainable."

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www.backyardaquaponics.com
Bringing Food Production Home