A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

Aquaponic Systems and Kits

Have you purchased a turn-key aquaponic system kit? How has that worked out for you?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Roger Pilon on December 31, 2010 at 9:50am

Hi everybody!

As the editor of the Aquaponics Hydroponics Monster Directory, I would like to share with this aquaponics community some feedbacks (3 at the time of writing this) I received about Portable Farms. The keyword here is unsolicited. These comments have been posted by users and are absolutely genuine.

If you are newbies to aquaponics, than this reading is mandatory. We are not talking here about the good, we are not talking either about the bad but more about the ugly.

See for yourself what users posted about Portable Farms and Colle Davis at: http://directory.ponics.org/link-337/portable-farms.html. Click on the Comments tab.

Roger Pilon

Permalink Reply by Steve Berg on April 3, 2011 at 4:56pm

This is hysterical. I am the guy who posted comment number 3! I never got a good vibe from Colle Davis. He was odd and flat out just trying to hustle me for my money. Thankfully we never did anything with him. That experience led me to learning about Murray Hallam's system in Australia and now to this community. Pretty neat little circle.

Roger Pilon said:

Hi everybody!

As the editor of the Aquaponics Hydroponics Monster Directory, I would like to share with this aquaponics community some feedbacks (3 at the time of writing this) I received about Portable Farms. The keyword here is unsolicited. These comments have been posted by users and are absolutely genuine.

If you are newbies to aquaponics, than this reading is mandatory. We are not talking here about the good, we are not talking either about the bad but more about the ugly.

See for yourself what users posted about Portable Farms and Colle Davis at: http://directory.ponics.org/link-337/portable-farms.html. Click on the Comments tab.

Roger Pilon

Permalink Reply by Roger Pilon on April 3, 2011 at 5:29pm

Steve!

You are absolutely right!

What a small world...and what a tiny world is the aquaponics community!

Roger Pilon, Editor

The Planet Fixer Reporter

Permalink Reply by Steve Berg on April 4, 2011 at 7:21am

Roger-

It is small now but growing. No pun intended! I believe it is poised to really become a mainstream pursuit for many Americans as they become more educated on the process and as food prices grow astronomically with the current market trends.

Permalink Reply by Jimmie Lynn Berg on September 4, 2011 at 1:21pm

Hi there,

Thanks for the confirmation of my thoughts. I have tried to get prices from the Davises as well and had to receive it as an attachment.

What bothers me is that they both call themselves the inventors of aquaponics and want huge amounts of money for a license before you buy the equipment to make the system.

My original connection was an email when I was looking at Med. Marijuana - which I now understand aquaponics is not an optimal system for that purpose. I am glad that I discovered aquaponics, but am going in another direction for building a system and getting information.

I could put a system together myself from Murray Hallam's DVD, which I purchased for a tiny amount.

I am looking forward to meeting all the people coming to the conference.

Thanks for this information.

Jimmie

Permalink Reply by TCLynx on September 4, 2011 at 5:39pm

Welcome Jimmie, yes there is tons of info about aquaponics available here and other places on the web for free. Anyone claiming to be the "inventor" of aquaponics is taking on a rather big claim seeing as UVI and others have been doing it in some form or another for decades and in Asia their farm integrated aquaculture with water plants is a form of aquaponics as well and I don't think there is anyone alive today that could claim to have been around when that started.

Looking forward to meeting you at the conference.

Permalink Reply by claude saunders on December 16, 2011 at 8:26am

Not that this probably comes as any surprise to anyone, but I purchased a variety of AP equipment from theaquaponicstore.com, and I've been very happy with it and the support I got. I like that I was able to assemble my own variation of a system from parts just as easily as buying a single full kit.

Permalink Reply by Sylvia Bernstein on December 16, 2011 at 8:34am

Thanks for that, Claude! Customers like you are what make our business so fun.

Permalink Reply by Don Goddard on March 6, 2012 at 5:34pm

Hi Folks,

I'm in Victoria, BC. I'm very handy, but time is limited, and I'm considering a turnkey system. What I've scrutinized fairly closely so far are the Nelson/Pade systems and the Aquabundance systems. I bet this question has been asked many times, but I've searched for related posts on this site and haven't come up with anything...

I note that Nelson/Pade claims a harvest of 215 pounds of tilapia from a 200 gallon tank, while Aquabundance claims a much more modest 40 pounds. Can you explain to me why there is a difference to a factor of 5, between these otherwise similar systems? Is it the additional filtering tanks supplied by the more expensive Nelson/Pade system? Is it hype? Has anyone here see/used/purchased the Nelson/Pade equipment?

Thank you.

Don

Permalink Reply by Sylvia Bernstein on March 6, 2012 at 8:06pm

HI Don. First let me say that I truly respect your due diligence process and wish that everyone considering purchasing an aquaponics system would ask questions like you are! As the manufacturer of the AquaBundance systems I feel compelled to answer your questions, but I hope that others chime in as well.

The most obvious answer is "yes", it is in part because of the extra filtration equipment. Because their system is a DWC/ raft system they need to include solids filtration equipment and remove fish solid waste from their systems. This could be why they estimate an hour of maintenance per day, while our system is closer to 5 - 10 minutes a day.

But even with solids filtration it defies reason that an amateur, home gardener can produce over a pound of fish for every gallon of water in four 50-gallon tanks. A professional aquaculture operation would have a difficult time producing results like that in an optimized system with tanks 100 times that size. I believe that experienced aquaponics folks will back up exactly what I'm saying. This is simply not realistic...even for a system that costs nearly twice as much as ours for the same amount of plant growing space.

Furthermore, our focus as a company is very different than our competitors. Our mission is to serve the needs of home aquaponic gardeners in North America, whether they be DIYers through my book and our other educational materials, test kits, and plumbing parts, or folks like yourself looking for high-quality turn-key systems. We plan to earn your trust and your long-term business by not making unsupportable claims about our systems. We are a completely open book through social media, this community site, my book, and blog, opening our company and it's products up to public scrutiny every day. I hope you take this into account when you consider which company's systems to pursue.

Permalink Reply by Don Goddard on March 7, 2012 at 2:30pm

Hi Sylvia,

Thank you for taking the time to reply so thoroughly; I believe what you are saying, and I suspected (even though I am not a fish expert) that 215 one-pound fish would have an excruciating existence in 200 gallons of water. I find that your book and nearly every comment I've read on this website, from you and others, smack of integrity, transparency, and good will.

I really feel strongly about food sustainability, and because I grew up in a small Saskatchewan farming town, the spirit of community amongst AP folks is heartwarmingly familiar. We're all just neighbours, after all, and we're better off if we help each other while we try to make a living, rather than misleading folks so we can gather a big pile of virtual money, the worth of which is questionable.

I'll continue to reseach and read; I'm very happy and grateful to find this site and all these brilliant folks sharing their ideas!

Best regards,

Don

Sylvia Bernstein said:

HI Don. First let me say that I truly respect your due diligence process and wish that everyone considering purchasing an aquaponics system would ask questions like you are! As the manufacturer of the AquaBundance systems I feel compelled to answer your questions, but I hope that others chime in as well.

The most obvious answer is "yes", it is in part because of the extra filtration equipment. Because their system is a DWC/ raft system they need to include solids filtration equipment and remove fish solid waste from their systems. This could be why they estimate an hour of maintenance per day, while our system is closer to 5 - 10 minutes a day.

But even with solids filtration it defies reason that an amateur, home gardener can produce over a pound of fish for every gallon of water in four 50-gallon tanks. A professional aquaculture operation would have a difficult time producing results like that in an optimized system with tanks 100 times that size. I believe that experienced aquaponics folks will back up exactly what I'm saying. This is simply not realistic...even for a system that costs nearly twice as much as ours for the same amount of plant growing space.

Furthermore, our focus as a company is very different than our competitors. Our mission is to serve the needs of home aquaponic gardeners in North America, whether they be DIYers through my book and our other educational materials, test kits, and plumbing parts, or folks like yourself looking for high-quality turn-key systems. We plan to earn your trust and your long-term business by not making unsupportable claims about our systems. We are a completely open book through social media, this community site, my book, and blog, opening our company and it's products up to public scrutiny every day. I hope you take this into account when you consider which company's systems to pursue.

Permalink Reply by TCLynx on March 10, 2012 at 11:58pm

Hi Don,

Another part of the reason that the Nelson and Pade kit advertizes high stocking densities probably also has to do with where their methods came from which is based closely on the UVI style of aquaponics where they feed a lot of food to a lot of fish and therefore have to remove solids from the system to keep it stable. This is ok if you have a soil garden or composting system that really wants all that fish waste and your aim is to grow more fish.

And the other side of the coin is the media based systems which generally don't remove the solids from the system and therefore you don't need so many fish or to pay for so much fish feed in order to grow the same amount or even more plants. In the media based systems the bio-filtration, solids filtration, worm home and plant growing space is all combined into one component making the systems simpler and in my personal opinion, more appropriate as a backyard garden if that is your aim (though I personally think 300 gallons is a more appropriate small fish tank size for my climate and fish choice.)