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stucco
08-02-2009, 06:58 PM
Greetings from Palm Bay, Florida. New to site. Found using Aquaponics Map (Thanks to Wild). Been lurking on Aussie sites for some time now, but never chimed in. Have had trial system up and running for about 8 months now with limited success (1 -150 gal holding tank with koi, 1- 150 gal sump, 1 – 2’ x 10’ feedtrough style growbed with hydroton and bell siphon). Original design based on video by Murray H. – Practical Aquaponics. Had a contest going with my wife and her own home made Earthbox design. She wooped my butt through the first crops of the year. Now my system is well established with bacteria and worms in the growbed. High yield crops thus far have been- swiss chard, radishes, variegated hot peppers, asian lettuce. Okra seems to open a flower a day, so I have been getting a lot of okra, but only one at a time- so I have to freeze them. Cucumbers, watermelon, cantaloupe are all flowering well, but yield is still low. Tomatoes could have more flowers and yield is still low. Celery seems to like the system, as does chives, and basil. Fennel did well for a while, but then had root issues. Parsley did not seem to like it at all.
Use calcium for salt water coral tanks, pond plant food, and maxicrop for missing nutrients. Have put crushed eggshells in system for additional dissolved calcium. BT and manual removal for bug deterrents. Fish food is as natural as I have found locally (feed2-3x daily). Trying to supplement fish food with soldier fly larva from household compost.
Working on a new system (2- 190 gal holding tanks plumbed together, 1 – 6’ roung galv trough from feedstore coated with sweetwater epoxy paint as the sump, 2-30” x 12’ wooden with liner growbeds, and 1- 3’ x 7’ very expensive fiberglass growbed coated with the same epoxy paint, will probably also add some 6” and 8” NFT .) I say expensive on the fiberglass- because I had to try my hand at fabricating it myself. It turned out well -for a first timer, but not necessarily worth the effort monetarily - except to say that I made it myself. Entire system is on concrete slab and covered with shadecloth. It will be complete and running in the next week or so- Might try and move some of the original hydroton to the new system to get a jump start. Don’t know yet.
I believe that is about it. Hope that more people this side of the pond are working on getting systems up and running and reply- it would be good to hear from locals to see what success they have had and swap notes.

stucco
08-02-2009, 07:15 PM
Additional pics.

jackalope
08-02-2009, 08:28 PM
stucco, First of all, Welcome to DIY Aquaponics forum ...... Glad you're here ... what a nice setup you have ..... we're already getting into Fall weather here, it's been in the low '40's last week, so mine is inside the building ..... all I've got left is four tomato plants 8' tall, with very few tomatoes on them ..... (I'm not a gardener, so I didn't know you were supposed to pinch them back to keep them short), I'm more interested in growing the fish ;). I love fish, but I hate fishing ...... a waste of time for me, I don't catch anything except a cold. We'll look forward to hearing more about your setups ..... I don't know what the winters are like in your neck of the woods, but you might be able to win first prize against your wife by growing a crop in the winter if it's warm enough now that your system has cycled :)

JCO
08-03-2009, 05:58 AM
Welcome to the show Stucco...stick around awhile and be sure to come back soon. We are all a friendly bunch with tons of info to disseminate to anyone who will listen. :mrgreen:

badflash
08-03-2009, 08:14 AM
Why Koi? You have prime real-estate for tilapia.

JCO
08-03-2009, 01:51 PM
I don't know what his reasoning is for Koi, but pound for pound they are worth more than Talipia if you have a way to market them :mrgreen:

badflash
08-03-2009, 05:58 PM
I hear you!

stucco
08-04-2009, 07:27 AM
Koi taste better! ;) Just kidding. The koi are part of the original trial system. We are still trying to find a fish to raise that my wife and I can agree on. What we really want is Jade Perch, but have yet to find a source here in the US. Great tasting and many helth benefits, but Aussyfish will not send a small quantity of (300-400) fish- you have to buy thousands of fish at a time. If anyone has info on that- it would be greatly appreciated. My wife is very into health benefits of the food eat- so catfish are out due to the fact that they are a nonscaled fish which means their digestive system does not rid itself fully of any contaminants and you then eat them. Talapia is a local favorite, but are high in Omega 6 which is not desirable in the long run to continually consume, which leads use to bluegill- tasty I’m told- but not sure they are the best production fish. At this point we are looking at pacu. We can get fingerlings locally and they grow fast. White, flakey, sweet flesh popular in Brasil as a gamefish. Pacu are omnivores so they will eat the solder fly larvae, and duckweed. Trying to rely less on fish food due to unknown ingredients and environmental concerns of fish requirements used for the meal in the food. Fish use to fed fish doesn’t make sense in the whole scheme of things, unless of course the fish ate them on their own in the wild. It takes 8 lbs of bait fish (sardines, etc) to raise 2 lbs of farmraised game fish- what’s the sense in that. Anyways- enough of my preaching- hope that answered some of your questions and Thank You for welcoming me to the forum.

badflash
08-04-2009, 09:33 AM
Go with Tilapia. The Omega 6 thing is pure bunk. Growing your own tilapia you can control their diet. Feed them food high in omega 3 and you get tilapia high in Omega 3. I'm sure your wife read that now discredited article that slammed tilapia. His data was bad and he had his own agenda. He suckered a lot of people.

The other thing is that you do not just eat tilapia. It is easy to balance your Omega 3 with other healthy foods. If you eat chicken, port or beef, are you concerned that is has no Omega 3 at all?

Jade perch take a very long time to get big, more than 2 years, so not a very good choice in my opinion. Hybrid bluegill appear to be a good option for most, but it gets warm where you are, so warm water fish are what I'd advise. You can get nice tilapia out of your local creek.

stucco
09-22-2009, 12:32 PM
Well I did go with tilapia. Couldn’t beat the price, they are in every ditch around here, including the one right next door. I had no idea. So my son and I scooped up 150 or so. Not sure of the type or how to tell the sex? It seemed easy from the pics. I saw on line, but they all seem to have the same parts. Maybe I’m not squeezing hard enough. :twisted: I don’t think out of that many they all could be the same sex. Anyhoo I finally have enough poo. And the system is starting to take off. We are getting into our grow season here since the caterpillars have slowed a bit

badflash
09-22-2009, 06:57 PM
Hard to say based on the pics, but I'd say O. mossambica. Doesn't matter for personal use. Wonderful hearty fish. They take well to captivity. If you scale & gut them, you can eat even a 1/2 pound fish by baking and filleting with your fork. It requires only a small cultural re-adjustment.

stucco
09-24-2009, 06:19 AM
No re-adjustment needed here. Fish is pretty much the only meat I eat. The tilapia in the picture came from a ditch with more than likely a lot of chem-lawn and orange grove runoff. Do you think that any chemicals soaked up by the fish would dissipate after some time? I agree the type doesn’t make any difference as they were free. Right now free is good! But not sexing how much does that slow the growth?

stucco
09-24-2009, 06:25 AM
I hoped that second pic would help.it was a little more clear on my monitor.

badflash
09-24-2009, 03:28 PM
The 2ND pic is of a male. I would not worry about pesticides. Just keep them in pesticide free water for a few months. When you harvest, stop feeding them for a week. It removes the gamy flavor.

Hand sexing is a good way to get all males. Once they get to breeding age the females waste their energy making babies. They end up thin and small.