Greetings from the Mother Ship

[Kilted AquaNut]

Hey All..

Been a fan of Aquaculture and Aquaponics for a good decade now.  Living in Canada, and seems like they're never going to allow the Red Claw for Aquaculture.  So have decided to give raising Tilapia a shot and possibly some Giant Prawns down the road.

Bout myself...

Middle thirty something, although I do prefer to be judged on my shoe size.  Currently living in Alberta near Red Deer.  In the process of scouting out a 5 acre parcel in rural townships.  The thing that strikes me is that most of these places have huge Quonsets.  Ie:  one i'm looking at is 48x72...

And think I had a moment of Erotic bliss when I looked into it and imagined possiblity's for recirculating system using Tanks or kiddie pools. 

Anyways... thought i'd say hi and introduce myself briefly.  Looking forward to getting to know some people here...

KiltedAquanut

[Keith Rowan]

how do you plan on keeping your water in the mid 80's for tilapia and prawns?

i'm in northeast ohio, and can't keep water that warm indoors, and only have a 3 or 4 month hot season for outdoors..

you might want to consider a native fish, and native crayfish 

[Kilted AquaNut]

Yea I'm still thinking bout keeping the temerapture at that level.  I was thinking Outwood Woodburning Furnace but bit too costly.  Going to be playing around with some stuff this summer.  There's some Tilapia farmers bout an hour from me that raises them in lower temps.  But for the prawns.. i'm thinking it might be too high temp wise.  I was thinking bout doing polyculture with Marble Crayfish. Seperating the Fish and Crays with a mesh to keep adults down but will let the  Tilapia feed on the baby crays since they're self cloners.  Going to get some from Saskatchewan i'm hoping next week and see how they do.  Supposed to be quite friendly. 

No interested in raising Trout to be candid.  Never was fond of em.  I eat Tilapia least 2x a week here.  So would be nice to raise some.  Having trouble finding any Fry, fingerlings or breeders atm.  Hoping when I visit the guy near me he'll part with a few.  But might have to buy a aquaponics system from him..sigh.  would rather avoid that personally. 

[TCLynx]

What about some other fish that doesn't require super warm water to be productive.  It doesn't have to be trout.  Catfish and bluegill are good warm water fish that can still survive cold water.

Then there are perch, I don't know anything about growing them but they have become popular in Wisconsin for aquaponics.

[Kilted AquaNut]

yea would love to do Catfish.  Would be a nice market here for them.  But Alberta doesnt list them as aquaculture species, even with a Class B licence.  Which I think is somewhat Silly as City of Calgary uses Catfish to reclaim organic matter and once mature sells em to pet food processors.  Double standard.  But I should call em up and see if pages has been updated or if other cold water ones might be added soon.  Thanks for your advice Lynx

[Robert C. Wood]

have you thought about using smallmouth bass. they do really well in your area.

[TCLynx]

AquaNut,

     You might also try working it out that the fish are not "for sale" often times for personal use, the regulators don't really care, it is only if you are going into the Aquaculture business that they are really interested in.  In aquaponics, it doesn't really take a huge amount of fish to grow lots of veggies and you would need an outrageously large operation to filter enough water to grow enough fish to sell them commercially to a processing operation, SO, are you really interested in growing the fish commercially?  Or would you rather just grow them for your own family?  Now I don't know what the regulations are like there, some places in the US will ignore people growing fish as pets while others are strict about everything you might possibly do.