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...
Great name by the way...

[urbanfarmer]

Greetings Earthling, and welcome to the addiction!

[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.