Aquaponic Gardening

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When you first hear about aquaponics the two reactions are Eww it has fish poo, or when can I build my 

system! The first time you hear about duckweed and BSFL there are two reactions Eww... or can I start now?! What we typically get around once a week on the community is the second reaction of alternative feed. From what I've read (correct me if I'm wrong) doing that is hard and requires either trail and error, or a lot of research (which slows down the process). What newcomers, and I, got was a muddled answer (no offence). This leaves people confused and hesitant to go to the next phase, or start a backyard system. This seems like a bad situation, because we need more data and a good answer to give. So, what advice can we give to people when we have to give them the Soldier Fly and Duckweed talk?

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Build it and they will come. I hope!

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The real answer.

Build the backyard system and start off feeding pellets.  Worry about making your own feed once you have fish to feed.

Duckweed takes a huge amount of space to grow enough of it to be more than just a treat for the fish.

BSF Larva or Worms are a fine treat but they are not a balanced food for the fish by themselves, they are too fatty.

If you want to learn more about the complex idea of making your own fish feed, there are actually a couple groups on the topic here.

"If you build it, they will come."

+1

I personally teach my fish to eat a variety of food.  I don't think the commercial food is the best choice because we do not know where they got the ingredients.  For the new person go with the commercial food until you are comfortable with the system and really understan how it works.  But commercial food has its drawbacks I sold some fingerlings to a man this am that his fish got sick and one half died.  He doesn't know why they died but he thin ks he gave them too much food.  You really need to know the amt of feed for the amt of fish.  With duckweed the food does not rot if they don't eat it.  I start out by putting duckweed above my baby fish I leave it there thing it if need be.  One day it is gone and I have to give them more each day as they have learned to eat it.  I feed the fish lettuce and other leafy vegetables.  I am raising BSF larvae for them and they love them.  We are not sustainable if we always buy our food and sometimes I question how healthy it is for us.  I didn't really stat feeding other things for about a year.  It took me a long time to really know the system and how to manage it.   So to the new person, know your system inside and out and add a little duckweed to the tank everyday.  If you are not going commercial why do you care if your fish does not hit 1 lb by 8 months especiallyif you are not paying anything for the food.  Enjoy  

Very good advise there from Raychel.  (By the way, she is growing mostly Tilapia I believe.)  The type of fish you grow will impact what and how you go about trying to feed them yourself.

I too feel that the commercial feeds (being so high in corn and soy, which have poor omega 3:6 ratio, are not all that good for us when we eat the fish and I further dislike the GMO nature of most of the corn and soy being fed to us and our animals) are probably not the healthiest choice.  However, trying to create your own feeding program with home grown feeds is challenging and getting that diet balanced enough to not only grow out healthy fish but also provide close to balanced nutrients for the plants could probably take a few lifetimes to perfect for each type of fish in each type of climate.  (What I mean is if some one from a different location or with different fish perfects it, that doesn't mean their system will translate perfectly to your location or type of fish.)  It might be easy to grow duckweed in one place but not in another, or some algae feed stock might be the perfect feed but be way too labor intensive for some one else.

There has been much research and money put into formulating the commercial feeds out there, you can't really expect to stumble upon the "perfect" home grown version in a few months.  They actually run trials with feeds where they will test the fish afterward to see if there are nutrition related problems from one feed to another.  Most of us at home are not really equipped to run big trials or do the testing so instead of 6 months of trial followed a couple months of testing/analysis of the results, we at home are left to spend years of "well it seems to work, the fish seemed to grow well, plants grew ok, I didn't have to add too much extra stuff" to decide if something is working or not.  This seems to work, if often ok for backyard production but doesn't work as well for commercial or even selling systems where people often seem to want a guarantee that what they buy will work a certain way (hard to guarantee anything so natural but impossible if the feed won't provide for the fish or the plants.)

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