My pilot project Francois

[Francois Lemmer]

I started messing around with tilapia 2006-2010

2010 - the end of july i had to take  my system down

i am currently trying to get a piece of property to set up a scaled system.

basickly i dont have a system that is running

but i want to share my last 4 years with aquaponics

with members.......

 

[Francois Lemmer]

Hi Harold Sukhbir
This to me was all a learning exercise...Hobby...and I loved every minute of it. 
If I can ever be a farmer slaughtering fish to sell or eat....
Don’t think I can do......have to wait and see..... feel very sorry for the fish
From when I started with my fishy experience my outlook has changed dramatically....
Even when I go fishing now I catch and release....
I have become a nature freak and look at things around me with a different perspective....

[Francois Lemmer]

Now my duckweed dam/filter was on the outside the plastic tunnel.
If I ever do again I would have the duckweed sump and all my pumps inside the plastic tunnel.
This will help with temperatures. With bigger volumes of water.....every degree you can maintain.......helps
Brings the cost down and you need to. Very important. 
 

From my duckweed sump I flowed into my pump sump that was a 210 l plastic drum/barrel.

Grow trays into duckweed

 

 

 

into pump sump where the water level was controled

 oxygen

and then back to the dam with pool pump. the pool sand filter was part of my prosess.

only one filter connected in this photo..other had hole..

 I had pool filter sand in the pool filter, and then I had shade netting...and then empty.... and later removing out of my system totally. This sand filter became a maintenance nightmare and I was losing a lot of pumping pressure because of this filter....my water in my dam was good quality even after I removed i could not see the diference.

The gained pressure... I used... I think in a better way...oxygen

[Francois Lemmer]

 2008 Barley in my system

 

[Francois Lemmer]

2008 Garlic in my system

[Francois Lemmer]

 

Growing of my duckweed was another vital link in the chain...cost,water quality back to fish...worm food...

 

Duckweed grouth in my system

10 9 2009

 

 

22 9 2009

 

I kept the duckweed separate from fish

I kept my breeding fish in the duckweed sump

 

Duckweed can make up a good part of your feed program and bringing the cost down.

Always aiming at the cheapest easiest solutions .....to keeping the daily cost down.

Feeding a lot of fish cost a lot of money and to keep the fish fed well........

When i started in my garrage 2006 yes i counted the cents to check what this hobby costing me...

i had done calculations of food cost but ....that go's in the back of the head....this was a hobby

My food cost shocked me going through summer 2009/10

Did not put me off thou...wife moaning but me learning as I go along.

my system if again i would put more focus onto the feeding of the fish

duckweed,worms and good tilapia food

i had all these avaliable but never experimented over long period

never really had time

 

[Francois Lemmer]

 

This was something that showed me just how potent the normal garden insecticide is for a garden and those who live in and about it........

I sprayed a plant with insecticide and after the plant died I collected the leaves and kept them in a corner.

Much later .......I used piece of this plastic bag to hold worms in before taking them to feed the fish on the farm......

Fed the fish these worms the afternoon and when I went back in the morning fish dead...

I killed 50% of my fish...every fish that got a worm was dead

Never used anything but what I make in my garden again

 

worms in my backyard

 

 

worm tray down the side of my town house

 pumkin and tomatos growing through the shade net cover over the worms

[Francois Lemmer]

The bath in the back ground is also with worms and in

the yellow tray are my leatchy trees i have grown from seeds

 

[Francois Lemmer]

These are photos of an aquaculture setup I paid for to see.
This group wanted to sell franchises and I attended their fish franchise seminar.....
They impressed me with what and how and what they had on paper but looking back now man......
I have to giggle on the one side and think don’t believe everything and anything others tell.

 This was their aquaculture setup.

 

 

Lots on paper but not much to see.....they had a fully booked seminar and we all paid....

easy money....

[Francois Lemmer]

My system was never a balanced or scaled but in all the time I had good plant growth.
My dam held 7000 l water
My grow trays volume was 2912 l.
My duck weed sump could hold 1920 l water
Total water +- 11832 l in system
Grow bed was only 14.8 sq meters.
Now taking these figures and you start doing some calculations then ......how did he get to design a system like that.
Very very green and over keen...a child with a new toy. The big dam I bought having big ideas...wanted to grow tons of fish...
I soon realized that I took a bigger bite than I could chew....and that the budget allowed for.
It was build and that was what I had to start my journey...addiction of Aquaponics
But in short this out of scale system still amazed me with the fish and plants.

[Francois Lemmer]

tomato's

Something else that grew well...these turned out to much work for me with the limited time I spent with my system...grew grew and grew...I used a hedge clipper to cut and try and keep in trim...Taste was to me better than you could buy...on pizzas the flavor really came to front...loved them

13/7/2008

 

they looked like this most of the time...lots of work to maintain

far to much tomatos and i was giving away in bags

[Francois Lemmer]

water cress grew like weeds

had no problems with ....

cut back

 

[Francois Lemmer]

MY pilot system was not on my property so I had to travel to and from every day.....

My system I build between indigenous bush.....my axis to the setup was along a narrow footpath and

 getting things to and from my setup was a nightmare...

it made moving 500 fish alive...you can only imagine....

 

 

after that stretch of path i got to a gate and then this was the final stretch of path to tunnel

I had sleepless nights when I knew I had to move fish the next day.Usualy my wife and me and then i had to get extra labour. 
As all know by now this was a one man show...everything...myself weekends and......all my spare time and of cource when i moved fish i had extra hands.my worm food i had to carry/push in wheel barrow down this path,fish food and everything that had to go there or come out.
Travel time was 45 min morning and 45 afternoons every day, so +-2 hrs of my day was gone.
Walking down to my system which was hidden on a back corner on a 1.8 hectare property also took time. I spent min time with the system I had to basically check and see everything was good with my system, do what had to be done and then starting my day job.....self employed.....changes and most of the maintenance was weekends. This was a pilot system opportunity to experiment...