Hello, and thanks!

[David - WI]

My name is Dave and I'm setting up a small commercial system; the first "phase" is probably about as small as you can go and be considered "commercial" (or I supposed viable).

We'll have yellow perch and floating rafts for vegetables... with programmable feeders, backup power, redundant pumps, text alerts, etc. I would like to be able to spawn our own fish but that will probably come much later; when we have the bugs worked out of the other systems.

We've found a nice little niche for our products and we have pretty low overhead since we already have the property and power is fairly cheap here. Hopefully our cost and production estimates are close.

I don't pretend to have all the answers, but our system is already designed and a good portion of it is built; so we're not going to make any major changes now unless something proves unworkable. A lot of things we're doing wouldn't make sense for someone with a backyard size system but hopefully we've found a balance that will result in a stable system in the end.

Anyway, thanks for hosting such a helpful & civil forum!

[davidstcldfl]

Hi Dave, welcome to the forum... :D
Great name by the way... :lol:

[urbanfarmer]

Greetings Earthling, and welcome to the addiction! :mrgreen:

[foodchain]

Right now you are running a monoculture with your fish. This works, but you can increase your production without drasticaly increasing your costs by converting to a polyculture.
Now which species is best for you, depends on your setup, and how many gallons of water you have to work with. Many species that can be aquacultured can work in a symbiotic relationship with one another. Check it out.....
I did about 10 years ago....and will never go back to a monoculture again. How many tons are you forecasted to produce/year?
What feed are you using? Using auto feeders you are using commercial pelletized feed. What is your protein %? Are you prefering to use a sinking or floating pellet?
Are you using a gas exchanger?
Going with a closed loop or semi closed loop system? Both work, just some folks have preferances of one over the other.

[keith_r]

welcome
looking forward to hearing more about your setup, and hopefully you have some pics?

[David - WI]

Thanks guys.

Technically it is polyculture; but the reality is that the perch will account for 95% of the meat revenue and feed cost. The rest is what I would call a "seasonal specialty" that will probably be harvested once a year. In order to make it all work, we're going to be stocking a lot of fish in a pretty small area, so we have back-up generator to power the pumps, aeration equipment, and food coolers in case the power goes out.

This first "phase" is just a pilot project to verify all of the design assumptions. The second "phase" will hopefully increase our production to at least a ton of fillets; but the important thing is to have them available every week... to be a "reliable" supplier.

The feeders are filled with floating pellets by an overhead system; the pellets will be produced on-site using a custom blend from our local feed mill. The system is designed to be able to maintain a strict feeding schedule that semi-automatically adjusts itself based on the weekly fish weight measurements we enter; without depending on somebody to be present at exactly the right moment to start or stop the feeders.

None of the pictures I've taken turned out very good; I can't get far enough way to get a decent shot without other things being in the way. I'll see what I can come up with though.

[foodchain]

Are you using an extruder and hammer mill then for the pellets? Protein demands for maximum production will change as the fish matures. So are you running a growout facility then? Or breeding on site, then moving fingerlings to main system for growout?
What is your other crop? To have multiple crops coming market ready every week, you're talking 10's of thousands of gallons in constant circulation. 52 weeks a year, assuming year round production. 52 harvestings/4 weeks a month, and 1 ton a month = 153.84 lbs per week. 6 oz fillet as that's an easy number for me to multiply with is...51.28 fish harvested per week.....for that to be feasable....good GOD! How big are your grow beds? What's your plan for the biproduct from the fish? Texas A&M I beleive it was, I could be wrong. Released a study in pdf about problems feeding fish parts back to the fish even if processed as feed. It's been a while but it was either a hormone or an lipid acid or something that it prevented being utilized. Or something...it was years ago I read it and would have to find it again. But it's a similar problem to feeding predatory fish ONLY feeder goldfish. It creates problems for the fish later on.

To procude this yeild of fish tonage, that's a lot of waste to consider.

[foodchain]

I am on the verge of being "commercial" myself. That's why I ask these questions, not trying to be nosey.
Your system sounds more automated then mine, but then mine is in my backyard/garage. It's more of a large scale pilot project to iron out the headaches and further my skills to reduce Ooops's when I finally gain funding to move this to a bigger scale.

[David - WI]

It's no problem, I'm just not sure how much I can say right now. I'm not sure how you arrived at 50 fish per week though... I think it's more like 1200?

[foodchain]

@ 1200 fish/week...either your fillets are smaller than 6 oz or your forecasted tonage is off. I laid the math out above so that it can be followed, and if there's an error or I missed a step someone can show me. For it to be 1200 though, your filletes have to be in the range of 2-3 oz ball park figures.
In which case, that's considered fertilizer down here, not a fillet. So I am trying to wrap my mind around this.
Either way...good luck, but please check your math (and mine) something doesn't add up here.

[Basil1]

1 ton of fish per month = 461.538 pounds per week. At 6 ounces per fillet, that = 1230 fish per week.

[bsfman]

1 ton of fish per month = 461.538 pounds per week. At 6 ounces per fillet, that = 1230 fish per week.

But you are forgetting there are two filets per fish, so that's 615 fish per week. :ugeek:

[foodchain]

Hmm, okay. I was looking at converting oz to lbs. That would've eliminated 2 sides of the fish, but apparently my estimates are off. That's what you get for math mostly in your head.
Will have to rework this and see where I goofed. I used a rounded 2,000 lbs as a ton too as it was an even number. That's probably part of it too as I am over rounding/simplifying.

[foodchain]

Also, we don't know the fillet size. Perch don't get big, least not that I have ever seen. I guess "big" is relative though.

[keith_r]

when you buy perch in the stores around here (at $15.99 a pound!) they come in "butterfly fillets", both fillet's still attached to the belly... average 4 or 5 butterfly to a pound.. but you'll be limited to selling live fish (until you get "processing" certifiied - a big investment)

figure meat on the fish accounts for about 40% body weight for yp..
8" is considered "market size", and can be done in a year..

i was reading my new aquaculture book, and one thing i read cleared up something that has had me thinking... the whole fcr ratio thing..
a near 1:1 fcr can be achieved (using high quality feed) because most of the weight gain in the fish is water.. but you also need to provide the best overall conditions for the species you're growing

[David - WI]

Mostly right on the money. I would prefer the (approx) 6oz butterfly mainly because they don't get overcooked so easily... I hate the little, dried out, "potato chip" perch & bluegill that we get in restaurants now. I think a little bit bigger fillet is a "premium" product, personally.

I'm expecting closer to 50% meat. The wild fish we caught & filleted ended up at 43% without the skins. We have some things designed into the system to improve that by a few percent; plus the butterfly with the skin on adds a little.

Feed conversion... yes another myth that "by definition you can't exceed 1:1 feed conversion"; the theoretical limit is like 0.82 or something.

[foodchain]

Why is that a myth?
Food conversion is simply the amount of feed to the amount of lbs grown.
Higher quality feed drives a higher price to produce. 2 years ago, I spent the investment on "higher quality" feed that guaranteed a 1:1 ratio, one lbs of feed to one lbs of fish. It was a closed loop system with good water quality. I kept temps within a 3 degree margin year round. The fish were sparsely populated in relation to fish/gallon, as I didn't want to worry about crowding. The fish DID NOT attain the growth guaranteed.
Conclusion: Feed producers are in the business of selling feed, not growing fish!
It's gotten me better yeilds per fish to look up the protein %'s for best results of a given species at various stages of development and use "alternative" feeds and own recipies. Also, cheaper to produce feed.

[David - WI]

It's a myth that the FCR can't be better than 1:1 because you would supposedly be getting more out than you're putting in.

"Research work by the major feed companies indicates that the FCR for certain species can be as low as 0.8, so there is further room for fish farming to become even more productive, without compromising its environmental or welfare standards." http://www.feap.info/home/FAQ/Answers/ans8_en.asp

[keith_r]

i read in interesting article.. you should use the smallest feed that the fish will accept, because it can pack more pellets into its stomach, with less "void" space... it sounded plausible..

[bsfman]

i read in interesting article.. you should use the smallest feed that the fish will accept, because it can pack more pellets into its stomach, with less "void" space... it sounded plausible..


Makes sense. You can pack more density into a shoebox by filling it with flour rather than biscuits!

[David - WI]

I wonder how the fish decide what the smallest piece they will eat is?

The Purina site says, "Match the feed size to the size of the fish. If the fish vary in size, use Purina Game Fish Chow with multi-sized particles. The floating ration allows for monitoring of the amount of feed consumed. Feed only as much as fish will eat in 10 - 15 minutes." so they know you can't just dump the small feed in a pond and have good results.

Now I have to rethink my choice of dies for making pellets, because I don't want to make pellets that are too small for the largest fish. Although the dies are cheap enough to have several.

[foodchain]

IF the previous posts regarding fish food size are accurate...why not feed flake instead of pellet?

[foodchain]

Utilize an extruder or pelletizing machine. These are hands down the two cheapest ways to go. IF you are looking for round pellets so they roll better, use the pelletizing machine. IF you are looking for long narrow pellets use the extruder.

[David - WI]

IF the previous posts regarding fish food size are accurate...why not feed flake instead of pellet?

I don't know... if big fish won't eat small pellets; why would they eat flakes? Plus, my automatic feeder fillers won't work with flakes.

[foodchain]

I didn't mean that seriously. Pellets are a better way to go over flakes in larger production systems as they are:
Easier to handle
less prone to cloging auto feeders
typically float longer
and spoil in the water slower

All around a better way to go.

[David - WI]

To have multiple crops coming market ready every week, you're talking 10's of thousands of gallons in constant circulation.
We could pump about 100 thousand gallons per hour, in this "pilot" portion, if we had to.


What's your plan for the biproduct from the fish? Texas A&M I beleive it was, I could be wrong. Released a study in pdf about problems feeding fish parts back to the fish even if processed as feed. It's been a while but it was either a hormone or an lipid acid or something that it prevented being utilized. Or something...it was years ago I read it and would have to find it again. But it's a similar problem to feeding predatory fish ONLY feeder goldfish. It creates problems for the fish later on.
If we harvest 1000 pounds of fish per week we should get 500 to 550 pounds of fish parts per week. We'll be feeding that much every day... in other words, we probably couldn't make enough fish guts & heads in a week to feed the fish for even a day.

[foodchain]

By itself. But you still have to dispose of it somewhere. I have looked into incinerators, bioreactors for methane, animal feed, fertilizer, etc and haven't foudn a financialy viable end product for the biproducts put out.

[David - WI]

Worst case scenario, we put the garbage bags of fish guts in a chest freezer (so they don't stink up the place) until the dumpster pick-up day and put them in before they dump it. We're talking about probably 6 or 8 bags a week... they dump it every week whether there's anything in it or not.

[keith_r]

get a cement mixer, grind it up, ferment and sell as fertilizer, producing another income stream, as well as eliminating waste output;

http://www.northernontariobusiness.com/ ... -deep.aspx (http://www.northernontariobusiness.com/Industry-News/energy/Fish-farmer-adds-value-with-fertilizer-from-the-deep.aspx)

[David - WI]

It's a good idea. Funny too, one of my first jobs was driving a ready-mix concrete truck.

I'm not sure I could get away with it here in the city.

[wstoltenberg]

With that sort of volume you could have a heck of a BSF colony going. The cold months would be a big challenge that far north - have to work out indoor breeding.