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  1. #1
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    Aquaponics Prawn and Tilapia

    I wanted to start an Aquaponics system that would be able to produce enough Tilapia to feed my family and make raw dog food for 10 German Shepherds and any puppies that come along throughout the year.

    From what I have read so far... The Tilapia can be fed crush prawn and vegetables. The Prawn would feed off the waste of the Tilapia. The Vegetables would gain the nutrients from the Tilapia and Prawn. Do I understand that right?

    My dogs are fed over 400lbs of dog food each month. Atleast 21% has to be protien or 24% for pregnant mothers and their children. The Tilapia would be the source of their protien and vegetables would be the fill in. I don't want to stock up on fish food, so I thought throwing in Prawn would solve that problem. This system would also be able to breed the fish and Prawn also, so I can have a continous supply. I plan on building this in a green house using solar power as my only source of power. I work at a power plant and have to deal with water chemistry so the water chemistry shouldn't be an issue. I am still trying to figure out a way I can maintain chemistry without having to buy chemicals for the system.

    I enjoyed Big Als setup, but I think I am gonna have to go a bit farther because of my goals.

    My biggest question..... Can it be done?

    I hate doing math, but I need to come up with a system which will provide these minimal factors...

    I must be able to produce 125lbs of Tilapia each month once I get the cycle going. 25% protien

    I must be able to produce enough Prawn to feed the Tilapia and fingerlings. I know their diet will not be strictly Prawn, but left over vegetables has well.

    I need a growth pool for fingerlings, hatching tank, breeding tank and adult tank (4 total) Haven't figured out the sizes yet, but was hoping to get some ideas here.

    The Prawn will be able to share a tank (preferable not round for footprint purposes) with floaters(lettuce or someother type). I know they are territorial so screens seperating them will also have to be used. I will probably need another tank to remove the Prego prawn to hatch the young. From what I read... the hatching tank for the prawn is brackish, so I wouldn't be able to grow anything else in them, is this correct? Now I am up to 6 tanks.

    The Process....

    The Tilapia tanks will be drawn from bottom (fishy poo) then ran into the Prawn tanks(fish poo food).
    The Prawn tanks will over flow into a sump continously. (7 tanks now argh)
    From sump.... the rest will be pump into the rest of the garden that has river pebbles
    Then back to the Tilapia tanks to start the cycle all over again.

    I kinda have a deal going with a local farmer. I buy a Steer each year and he raises him, them I slaughter him for 600+lbs of beef. This usually last me for a year for a family of four. The dogs don't get the beef. I really want to be set up to provide my food without having to depend on anyone. I live on 30+ acres with a few ponds and 50,000 acres of gamelands surrounding me.

    What would you guys suggest for tank sizes? and if you have any ideas to make this work would be greatly appreciated.

  2. #2
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    Re: Aquaponics Prawn and Tilapia

    hi there GSDbreeder, thank's for the mention, glad you enjoyed. from what ive read prawn like shrimp
    prefer a rectangular type of tank with a taper built into the bottom. prawn's are very territorial so you
    wont be over stocking them unlike shrimp. best of luck with your set-up. best wishes. good luck Big Al

  3. #3
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    Re: Aquaponics Prawn and Tilapia

    where are you located? for good tilapia growth, you want the water temps in the mid 80's... you may be able to grow some of the food for your tilapia, like duckweed and veggie scraps, but to get decent growth, you need a high quality fish feed..
    if you have good conditions, you should be able to grow the fish out to a pound in 6 to 8 months.. so 125 fish a month..
    are you planning gravel growbeds? that would provide your filtration, but if you're thinking of DWC, you'll need prefiltration so that you're not pumping solids through the roots..
    are your ponds spring fed? what are you raising in your ponds? RAS might be a better option for growing that much fish

  4. #4
    Moderator JCO's Avatar
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    Re: Aquaponics Prawn and Tilapia

    I don't want to rain on your parade, however I think you are out on a limb thinking that you can raise prawn in the numbers you will need in order to produce the amount of food the Tilapia will need.

    Figure out the number of Tilapia you will have to produce each month considering at least a 6 month grow out period for the Tilapia (don't forget the prawn grow out also) and I think you will see what I mean.

    Don't forget, you are wanting to produce food for you and your family also and that means even more Tilapia to produce each day/week/month/year. You will also probably tire of eating fish every meal, I know I did.

    As for your dogs, my wife and I have raised about everything you can think of. Back in the 70s & 80s we owned a horse ranch in Southeast Missouri in the foothills of the Ozarks. We raised registered Appaloosa horses and owned some powerful named breeding stock but was never quite able to make them actually pay for their own up keep what with vet bills, upkeep of the pastures (fertilizers etc.) and Oh.... don't forget the feed especially in the winter. Takes a lot of quality hay and sweet feed to keep the bellies of a Stud horse, 12 mares and 15 colts and yearlings full every day of the week not to mention wading the snow and mud twice a day in freezing weather or smothering heat in the summer to get it done.

    We sold out and moved to Florida in 1987 and since we have been here we have raised exotic birds; Sun Conures, African Greys, Love Birds, Cockatiels & Parakeets. Dogs; Miniature Schnauzers, Dachshunds, Yorkshire Terriers & Lhasas. Cats; Munchkins & Bengals. None ever produced the amount of return expected or hoped for considering the amount of work and initial investment involved.

    I now raise KOI just for the love of them for as I have found in the past in order to raise anything in sufficient numbers to hopefully make it self-supporting, it's a full time job, takes a lot of space and specialized equipment and takes a lot of money to get the operation started and maintained and a lot of specialized marketing to sell the results.

    I had over a million dollars invested in our horse ranch including the horses and it still wasn't enough to produce the kind of return that I needed just to be self-sustaining (able for me and my wife to quit our full time jobs) or show a return on the amount invested worth talking about.

    As for your dogs, are they truly paying their own way or are they just an expensive hobby as I have found in the past right up to and including my Appaloosas which I loved dearly. My wife and I were both working full time jobs in addition to the horse ranch. You and your wife try getting up a 4 AM (every morning) any morning in the winter with a foot of snow on the ground, temperature of 5 below zero with a wind chill factor of 15 below and now both of you go out and spend an hour or more tending to the horses, then come back in and get ready for work. I can't speak to cold weather like Jackalope can with his Wyoming winters but I know what it was like for us in Missouri and it sucked hind tit all the way..!

    So I guess what I am saying is if you want your family to be completely self-sustaining, you are going to have to evaluate what you are willing to give up to get there...dogs (wife.. kids ) or what you are willing to do and invest in order to get there.

    I don't want to discourage you by any means, however the Aquaponics operation you are talking about is going to require at least or maybe more than a 30' X 100' greenhouse with heat (if you are going to raise Tilapia year round) and ventilation, lots of electric and considerable know how on the Aquaponics side. Notice I didn't say it couldn't be done.

    I can't do it for you, but I will be glad to answer all the question you have that I can.

    ALSO, Please go to your profile and put in the city and state where you live, there may be members close by.
    JCO
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    • "In the eyes of the world, you are only as good as your last success"
    so never forget
    • "MAN IS ONLY LIMITED BY HIS IMAGINATION"

  5. #5
    Moderator urbanfarmer's Avatar
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    Re: Aquaponics Prawn and Tilapia

    I'm no expert on the prawn, but I believe they don't actually eat the fish poop only pick through it for undigested food. Also, that sounds like it would create a water quality problem for the prawn. I might be mistaken, but I think they are fairly sensitive to the quality of the water.

    Since you only want the prawn as fish food for the Tilapia, how about replacing that portion of your concept with Duckweed, Black Soldier Fly Larva, Red Wiggler Worms, and Algae (with all the zooplankton it would attract). This would be easier and give the Tilapia a wide range of diet to keep them healthy and growing.

    Also, you can consider just setting up a few ponds with "green water" (pea green soup of algae) and then putting the Tilapia fry in there. Depending on your weather conditions (where do you live?) you can grow out fish very easily and with less maintenance. The only problem with this is you will need a way to control the population after the first season or so because it will get pretty crowded (they reproduce like rabbits). You might be able to just add a few predatory fish to control their population as well. Draining the pond is another option or having a big net sit in the pond is even yet another option.

    There are many choices and it's definitely something you can do. You just have to figure out what works best for you and your geographic area and how much time and money you care to put into it.

  6. #6
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    Re: Aquaponics Prawn and Tilapia

    It kinda sounds like you are trying to raise tilapia in a closed system but you are planning on taking stuff out of that system to feed your dogs and family and hence the system is not truly closed and you will need to put some input in to replace what you are taking out. I think you have lots of research to do. I would suggest getting a small system up and running to help you learn while you continue the research into the bigger all inclusive systems.

    You have not told us your location or climate so it is hard to know how feasible this is.

    A note about duckweed. You need a huge amount of space to grow a huge amount of duckweed. 12 tilapia will quickly (5 days or less) clear the surface of a 16 foot by 2.5 foot duckweed tank and think you are starving them but add a hand full of high quality commercial fish feed pellets a day and they hardly touch the duckweed.

    Seeing as you have a large amount of land, have you thought about diversifying a bit? Like maybe having some animals that will work to feed themselves rather than requiring you to build systems to feed them? Like Chickens and Muscovy ducks that could live in the woods and provide eggs and meat while largely feeding themselves free range if you have appropriate space and numbers?

    Work on some food forest planting on your land as well to provide for you.

    Back to the tilapia, to grow at the really fast rates that everyone likes to tout, they need really warm water 80-86 F is optimum (unfortunately this is a bit warm for many of the easy raft bed plants to grow.) Also, if you want tilapia to grow out big fast, you need to keep them from breeding. Commercial operations do this by raising all male stock (done either by feeding the fry hormone laced feed to make them all develop as males or by having special breeding fish that will only produce male offspring.) Smaller operations might manage by manually checking the gender of the fish when they are big enough but this is very labor intensive and prone to errors. In my aquaponics system I kept mixed gender blue tilapia in a cage in the system so they could not access the bottom of the tank and therefore couldn't successfully breed (they are mouth brooders so the female has to pick up the fertilized eggs in her mouth in order for them to hatch successfully so if they fall through the cage and she can't get them then no successful breeding.) Now with the cage culture I managed to avoid most of the problems though the females don't grow nearly as fast or big as the males I still managed ok but there are challenges to feeding in a cage (feed floats out of cage.) But this might be the best bet if you don't want to mess with hormone laced feeds or buying really $$ breeding colony fish or having to handle the fish so often for sexing and keeping them separated and stuff.

    Now for growing tilapia out big and fast you really need to feed high quality high protein feed while they are young, this may be challenging if you are trying to produce all the feed in the system with duckweed and prawns. Also, even growing them out once they are big enough for the normal 32-36% protein feed for the more mature fish is going to be hard trying to do it on a system with no external inputs. Even green water culture uses fertilizers to get the algae blooms (I don't recommend this in an aquaponics system but there are other methods like solar algae ponds that might be of interest to you.)

    Anyway, is it possible, well just about anything is possible, the questions are, what sort of resources do you have to make it happen. Choices of do you want really fast fish growth, then you probably need to use commercial feeds or is it more important to minimize outside inputs and grow your own feeds, well then the question is how much space and time and resources do you have to devote to this or will you reduce the amount you expect to get out of it. Finally the climate or size of the greenhouse will have a big effect on how possible this is and if you are in a cooler climate, how much can you put into heating that greenhouse? If you can't easily keep the greenhouse warm through winter, tilapia might not be the best choice of fish.
    TCLynx

  7. #7
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    Re: Aquaponics Prawn and Tilapia

    Raising fish commercially for the tropical fish industry, I had to maIntain a certain #of each size of fish from number of spawns required, tanks seperating weekly age groups all the way to adults. It was totally graphed out. To make it truely a dependable source you sill need several times the amount if tanks and containers to control productivity and accelerated growth that you need than you have mentioned. Graph it out and you will understand what I am saying. If you crowd or mixed age groups it will cause stunted growth and cannibalism

  8. #8
    Moderator JCO's Avatar
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    Re: Aquaponics Prawn and Tilapia

    TCLynx, he lives in North Carolina somewhere...however if he is surrounded by national forest, it's very rural and to raise chickens and ducks in that setting is a chore. They have to be locked up securely at night and even then sometimes they aren't safe.

    When I first moved to my horse ranch in Missouri in the foothills of the Ozarks from having lived in close to town, I had chickens and ducks (crested Khaki Campbell Ducks...beautiful ducks). The chickens... I had no problem in getting them to roost in the hen house, however once the ducks discovered the pond on the property, you couldn't get them to come back to the barn yard and within a matter of a few weeks the Coyotes and Fox and no telling what other critters had devastated my duck flock to extinction.

    I live in an urban area now and still had trouble with predictors killing my chickens even though they were secured each night. Never found out what is was, tred trapping to no avail...wasn't happy about it, but finally got rid of the chickens.

    With that in mind, it would take some serious thought as to what else could be safely raised in the setting this member lives in.
    JCO
    Irish eyes are always smiling but
    • "In the eyes of the world, you are only as good as your last success"
    so never forget
    • "MAN IS ONLY LIMITED BY HIS IMAGINATION"

  9. #9
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    Re: Aquaponics Prawn and Tilapia

    Rabbits are the easiest to contain and produce the best manure for earthworms. combination of rabbit manure and alfalfa a winng combination.

  10. #10
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    Re: Aquaponics Prawn and Tilapia

    I've been using electric netting to protect my birds but I've probably not contended with anything worse than raccoon or possum.
    TCLynx

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