A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

Warm Blooded vs. Cold Blooded Aquaponics

It is often touted that aquaponics should be strictly done with cold blooded creatures to mitigate the chance of spreading human diseases. What are the factors influencing this?

For those of you that have experience with gardening with manured water from (warm blooded critters) ducks, geese, chickens etc... let us know your experience or what you do to make ensure the safety of the food you grow?

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by TCLynx on November 28, 2011 at 5:37am

Carey has a more holistic permaculture thing going on, Not Just Aquaponics but the whole farm is part of his designs.

The birds not wasted Carey, they are getting recycled just not getting to grow up as birds first, we still appreciate them as part of the larger whole even if we feel bad that they died young.

Permalink Reply by Paul Holowko on December 15, 2011 at 11:56am

Here is an experiment using fish as food for plants in Aquaponics. If you click on the link below you can see the chemical data in the water and the equipment setup. This is a very warm, cold blooded thing to do.

http://www.gardeningrhythms.com/using-dead-fish-as-aquaponics-ferti...

Permalink Reply by Jesse Hull on December 15, 2011 at 3:55pm

Check out this test. All 'hydro-organic' nutrient solution derived mainly from rabbit manure.

Permalink Reply by Paul Holowko on December 15, 2011 at 4:50pm

Jesse Hull said:

Check out this test. All 'hydro-organic' nutrient solution derived mainly from rabbit manure.

I looked at your posting. Very nice! Can you send me the exact ingrediance list and amounts. I would like to reproduce what you did.

Paul

Permalink Reply by larry poe on May 30, 2014 at 11:43pm

I do this all the time and have done so all my life (soil garden) though it wouldn't make sense to me to add manure to aquaponics esp if there are fish in the system.

however back to the soil garden, we have always added the manure from farm livestock to the garden. always. in fact every bit of the manure from our rabbit operation goes into the garden. in fact a garden surrounds the rabbit barn for just that purpose. same for the hen house and chicken pen. the hay fed to the horses, cattle, sheep, goats, ect ect, is fed throughout the winter exactly where I want to plant potatos the next spring.

just about every corn farmer in my area uses poultry litter from grow houses on fields there going to plant corn in. any poultry manure is high in nitrogen and corn needs a lot of it.

I also use the ashes from the wood stove in the dirt garden, wood ash is about 10% potash.

the rule of thumb I was always taught as a kid was if it was manure from herbivores or foul it was fine as is.

. while for the most part the manure is composted on site before planting, that's only because of the timing it was produced lol. when its time to clean the hen house or rabbit barn in warm weather I don't pile it in compost bins as a rule (though some does go in there with the grass clippings from the yard) I just put it between the rows of corn, tomatos, ect. nowhere a root crop is though.

I haven't died yet from it and im 43

Miguel Afonso said:

Great discussion. I knew this one could bring out strong opinions. To push it a little further. Would you recommend using manured water on plants in soil? What about aged or composted manure not withstanding adding too much nutrient to the system. Nasty stories of liver flukes are welcome, but I am trying to explore the subject with the possibility of repurposing warm blooded critter waste. Seems so far, cold blooded 1, warm blooded 0. TCLynx, I liked your idea for keeping your duck water clean, do you use aquatic plants to do the trick?