Salmon in Aquaponics?

[Sylvia Bernstein]

Portable Farms just announced a "Salmon Aquaponics System" - (portablefarm dot com slash farm2011 slash salmon-aquaponics).  I'm pretty surprised by this as I thought salmon were salt-water fish.  The entire web page just talks about dealing with temperature differentials.  Anyone have any idea what is going on here?  Why wouldn't you just call that a Trout System?

[Curt Meilicke]

And yet an additional two cents from Wisconsin.  The Wisconsin DNR has been rearing and releasing Coho and Chinook salmon into Lake Michigan for years.  I can speak from fishing experience that they can grow quite large out there.  Don't know how long it would take for them to get to a relevant size in an aquaponic system.  But you should be able to raise them without switching to salt water.

And to the point of burying the fish tanks in the ground.  Sweet Water in Milwaukee has a number of tanks set in the ground.  I'm not sure if they've gone a full year yet.  But one of the main reasons was for constant temperature control.  I think they were putting perch in them  You know, the whole Wisconsin Friday Night Fish Fry thing.

[Vlad Jovanovic]

Hope you have lots of cash to go along with that piece of dirt :) 

Averan said:

If I had a piece of dirt to install an AP system on, I'd definitely lay down a couple hundred feet or so of coiled pipe underground and another coil in a solar collector on a roof so that I could circulate water through either one to cool or heat as needed. I'd also be looking into ground-coupled heat exchangers to heat/cool the air in the greenhouse:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-coupled_heat_exchanger

http://www.sunnyjohn.com/indexpages/shcs.htm

[Averan]

These heat-exchange systems can be done very very cheaply.  The simplest form uses cheap poly pipe in loose coils.  The laziest application I've seen just tosses up a coil of poly pipe on top of a tin roof completely uninsulated!  None of the parts required cost much; the biggest challenge is digging the hole.  ;)

[Vlad Jovanovic]

I was thinking hundreds of feet of copper and more along the lines of a "traditional" ground source heat pump, but I see now that these systems are quite different.

Interesting...kind of like the old Roman Plenum heating systems, only better...

[David Owens]

I visited Growing Power in Milwaukee and they had a large tank buried (above ground) in a large pile of composting woodchips. They were allowing the heat from the compost pile heat up the water in the tank and then pumping that water into the Fishtanks which were also sunk 4' into the ground inside their hoophouse for insulating purposes. It seemed to be working very well as their was snow on the ground when we were there. I would love to find a way to raise great tasting and highly nutritional salmon in my AP system one day so I believe this discussion is great! Thanks everyone

[Jon Parr]

Mmm, salmon

[Ian Cameron]

Actually, theres a Hutterite colony in Montanna, raising fresh water coho in a recirc system. Its an aquaponic setup. I think its called High Plains. There was a write up in Hatchery International this past fall. I can try to resurrect the article if any interested.

Ian

[Averan]

please do!

[Rebecca B]

Found this: http://www.aquaculturenorthamerica.com/2011/09/19/high-plains-coho/

[Ian Cameron]

Actually there is a Hutterite colony in Montana raising fresh water coho in an aquaponics system I read about it in the Hatchery International magazine  this fall. Its a fully enclosed recirc system. The name of the outfit is High Plains something or the other (can't remember it all). I can try to find the mag if any interest.

[Ian Cameron]

Ahh Rebecca...sorry about that, I should have read your post a little closer.  I am currently in discussions with our little Coho hatchery ( that DFO wants to shut down) to use the infrastructure as an aquaponics project.

[Averan]

keep us posted Ian.  I'd love to hear more about it!