It’s been a while since I’ve posted, started my welding career finally due to covid, not the exact company I wanted as not many projects to bid on, but am on call once another opening happens, so gotta do what you gotta do and take what you can get. Anyways so as this post goes I have been looking for land to start building a home on, and I am starting to go about how I am looking to fund it. I will be purchasing my first duplex/4plex in the town my parents have their farm at within the end of the year hopefully if work continues to stay steady and use the rental income to pay off the mortgage, and use the rest to put away for down payments on more. In the end once they are somewhat payed off I will take whatever is left after each monthly mortgage payment to put towards my home. I’ve been looking at 7-10 acres to build on and have really started to get into aquaponics. Now here’s where my questions start, about half of the acreage will be dedicated to blueberry/raspberry farming, and then the remaining to aquaponics. Since the fruit is seasonal I need something all year round. So realistically growing tilapia, which the water goes throw filtration first, through plant roots equals growth for the plants. Instead of the putting an actual building, I have seen green houses which seem like a great idea, although only problem I am facing is the 4 months of winter, never gets lower than -10c and if that for a few days at a time. Now bringing the hobby, as for tilapia grown for food and sold, and the fruit and vegetables being sold as well as trying out raising freshwater prawns I would like incorporate my hobby into it. As I’ve had a stingray and would like more, the thought of having a pond with rays and doesn’t aquaponics with them as well, not a tremendous scales but something to try (would it be doable? Maybe worth it?) the main thing is it needs to make some sort of money, mainly to supplement mortgage. Possible breed some fish or java moss to grow and sell as well. I am not trying to get rich off of this, just as long as it could somewhat help out a little bit is good enough. If anyone has had any experience Or any chime Ins on their thoughts of the logistics or if the time invested to what the return is would be helpful. In the end it’s my goal and I’m working as hard as I can to hopefully start piecing it together soon
Anyone have experience with large scale aquaponics?
- Thread starter M@T!@$
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I visited this small indoor farm which was all about recycling. They had large tanks of perch and tilapia with the water feeding into large plant beds, with one of the plants or leftovers, with be ground up into fish pellets or be given away to farms for animal feed. I haven’t personally done a large scale aquaponics, but I know it’s possible
I’ve been brain storming the use of waste water, wether for something like this to have a constant drip on the ponds, which would collect into storage tanks which in turn would be used to water the berries grown. I’ve seen videos on some farms and it seems like they all use pentair systems for their tanks, filters ect, to make it more affordable it would for sure be better to build it myself even concrete or plywood ponds
Regarding the PentAir systems..my advice: Don't go with commercial systems.. they are way over-priced and lots of custom-build parts in it, so you get stuck with them.
The easiest to start up is going with media-beds. Fish tanks at a higher level, draining into a cyclone filter of sorts to remove solids.
After that, feed directly into eb/flood media-beds planted with whatever plants you're planning to grow or dig a large "Central Station" from where it's pumped around (back to the fishtanks, to the media beds, to Dutch buckets..etc).
Once you have that set up, it's easy to expand it into other types of grow areas (towers, floating beds, etc).
Important part is to try and catch as much of the solids as possible before it flows out to the plants.
Harvesting the solids will also be another revenue-stream as the nutrition value (as plant-food) is tremendous.
Will be interesting to see you start with this.. dabbling into aquaponics as well here in Thailand.
Good luck,
Luc
The easiest to start up is going with media-beds. Fish tanks at a higher level, draining into a cyclone filter of sorts to remove solids.
After that, feed directly into eb/flood media-beds planted with whatever plants you're planning to grow or dig a large "Central Station" from where it's pumped around (back to the fishtanks, to the media beds, to Dutch buckets..etc).
Once you have that set up, it's easy to expand it into other types of grow areas (towers, floating beds, etc).
Important part is to try and catch as much of the solids as possible before it flows out to the plants.
Harvesting the solids will also be another revenue-stream as the nutrition value (as plant-food) is tremendous.
Will be interesting to see you start with this.. dabbling into aquaponics as well here in Thailand.
Good luck,
Luc
So is that the reason for why the pentair aquaponics tanks are a cone? I will likely be building a mini aquaponics system within the next two weeks for the current pond I have to see how well the vegetables would grow. As for green house I would most likely do a plywood/ Fiberglass tank, or 2x4 and liner, I would prefer to have windows to moniter the health of the fish
