So I did the Piedmont Farm Tour 2 weekends ago and was impressed by one small farm's conversion
of an old above-ground swimming pool into a rainwater catchment pond. They're eventually going to stock it
with breeding, marketable fish after the pond produces enough vegetation to support the biomass and eat the mosquitoes, and also use that nutrient-rich water for their vegetable production.

Has anyone ever incorporated mini-aquaculture into their food production practices? I'm especially interested if you raised fish in stock tanks or rain barrels.

4/25/2011 5:41:28 PM

our org. has a decent size aquaponics system here. you can pm me if you'd like me to connect you with someone who knows alot about it.

4/25/2011 6:36:14 PM

dude at work raises crappie in some kind of old tank. uses a hydraulic ram pump to pump water to it. it's pretty sweet.

4/25/2011 8:18:57 PM

I've never personally had a aquaponics system but I am really really interested. I'm hoping to construct a small (probably only 30 gallons or so) one this summer to hands on learn as much as I can with the hope of eventually moving up to a system that is more like 75-100 gallons.

I'm hoping to build a system similar to this for on the cheap near the end of this summer

http://www.aces.edu/dept/fisheries/education/documents/barrel-ponics.pdf

probably the easiest to follow instructions and explanation I've found on the internet and he isn't trying to sell you his system like some of the other sites I've looked at.

In action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG-bB7d1n2w

I'm planning my first run to be with the cheapest fish I can find (like goldfish or something) in case I kill them off and just try to grow vegetables with the first run.

eventually I'd like to grow around 50 or so tilapia, or preferably rainbow trout, a year but that is just a pipe dream at this point.


there is also some links from an NC state website, but I think it is more commercial oriented

http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/nreos/wild/aquaculture/



[Edited on April 26, 2011 at 9:04 AM. Reason : .......]

4/26/2011 9:00:57 AM

goldfish are a pain, i would skip them.

i have a lot of experience with tilapia ponds in other countries and tilapia seem to be pretty easy to grow. in fact the biggest problem in my experience is making sure you sex them or they will reproduce too much and not grow large enough due to the population in the pond. we used wicker baskets and threw compost in them in the ponds.

4/26/2011 9:10:45 AM

Yeah I've read tilapia are pretty easy, almost impossible to kill, and you can even grow duckweed or something similar to feed them instead of buying fish food. I'm just not sure where you would go about buying tilapia stock, and only buying about 10-15 fish (I don't think you could fit more than that in the first system I want to build)




If I find a source it will probably come down to the price of tilapia versus the price of shiners at the local bait shop. The first run I'm just gonna see how hard it is to manage without killing the fish.

[Edited on April 26, 2011 at 9:17 AM. Reason : ..]

4/26/2011 9:15:38 AM

call someone in the ncsu extension office, they can probably tell you exactly where to find what you are looking for. its a great service, and if they don't know they'll probably find it for you.

4/26/2011 10:12:17 AM

My motivation for starting an aquaculture system is two-fold: excess of tanks with no use besides rainwater catchment, and an interest in biomass filtration/small pond ecosystems. PM sent.

4/26/2011 10:40:13 AM