My pilot project Francois

[Francois Lemmer]

I started messing around with tilapia 2006-2010

2010 - the end of july i had to take  my system down

i am currently trying to get a piece of property to set up a scaled system.

basickly i dont have a system that is running

but i want to share my last 4 years with aquaponics

with members.......

 

[Francois Lemmer]

remove 2 old rafts and replaced with 2 new rafts with plants

i have been having more success with pepper seeds...

i want to try peppers again..last year i did not to do good with peppers

 

 

[Francois Lemmer]

Hi all

I am not new to the bsf larva thing but it has really bitten me.

Last year in summer I had enough bsf larvas to feed the fish a hand full every other day….they the fish love the bsf.

Through winter there was very few larvas’ around but summers here and I have seen a few males around my worm bins and larva in the bins…

I want to use this summer to getting to really know these incredible composters

I want to house and feed them in a white shade cloth house and get a breeding setup going….

i added worm casting as a base and +- 30 bsf larva that had already crawled out of the feeder and 

are ready for the next phase of their lives...

lets see how it goes??????

[Francois Lemmer]

black soldier fly

Up to now I have had 4 bsf in the small indoor breeding house I build I release all 4….Around my worm bins I have seen 2 bsf flying aroundToday I sat next to the worm bins with a camera sat there for 15 min and then I saw the 1st bsf and at the same time there was another 2 bsf together at once and this is photos I took of the one….Difficult to get both bsf in same shotThis one kept on coming back

 

 

 

 

  

[Francois Lemmer]

Today I moved all the fish I had left in my system tank (700L) I never weighed the 12 off tilapia that I moved 2 weeks ago but I guess they were all together…+-1.5kg I weighed every fish (Kio) today The total weight of the Kio together was 7.312kg I still have a few Kio in the duckweed trays that i left to keep the system going untill i get new fish….I can now do my sums costs to see how it went…. I have enough data to put on a spread sheet Water, electricity, fish pellets, veggies verses what I received for the Kio…. Now having fish weight I can now do a report on how the system did over the last year I have 1 year of record keeping of other parameters…. The tilapia I gave away and the Kio I sold and received R1500 for the 14 Kio (give away). I will post results for the year once I have completed the spread sheet. I am trying to get trout fingerling to replace the fish …. Starting from scratch no experience with trout…I have never grown trout before…..this will be the first….a new challenge for me and this system capacity…I am very keen to see how I can do with trout…. I hope I can get some trout fingerlings

[Francois Lemmer]

 just hatched bsf larvae

[Jason Finn]

Amazing thread my friend!

[Alex Veidel]

This is amazing. Do you keep your soldier flies contained? Or do they fly in and out of your system? I've been trying to get a bsf colony started, but its been nothing but a thorn in my side for the last year. I tried containing them, but I dont think I gave them enough room and had a dickens of a time getting them to mate. I guess the most annoying thing is that I have been unable to attract external adults to my colony. The other thing is that my system is forced to go dormant every winter, so I have to wait until things warm up to find out whether the changes I've made have any effect. But if you could keep them contained with a larger amount of airspace for mating...I could keep them warm and active in my garage!

[Francois Lemmer]

thanks Jason

Jason Finn said:

Amazing thread my friend!

[Francois Lemmer]

Hi All

I have not posted for a while.......

no fish in my system.....I am building a office in my backyard and with all the movement I did not want to put fish into my tank....missing summer but I will start up as soon as building complete...hopefully very soon.

building around the system...not much space so quite a battle

[Francois Lemmer]

Alex
The bsf is the  wild population around here...I have strips of cardboard to collect the eggs and then I will hang over food until they hatch.
I will keep them in that container until they are bigger then I will empty the container with the half grown larvae into a bigger half a drum and from there they grow out until I can collect the larvae’s but I have not been collecting larvae ....for now I let them do as they want want to start collecting later for winter....I want to try and keep them at a lower temp....????? yes this is the wild population eggs I collect.....I want to experiment growing them in winter so for now I have not build a indoor system yet. I need the building to be completed and then check if I have space...I live in a townhouse complex but it looks like a farm with all these different stuff I have been playing with...love the challenge. I wish I had bigger property

[Francois Lemmer]

this is the larvae in the water mellon you see in the photo above

Hi All
I have been very patient with this BSF. Thing……………I now have the ball rolling…

 

[Francois Lemmer]

I sold the fish Dec.15 last year and have not replaced them yet. The plants that were in the rafts at the time I left to grow and after more than a month of no fish in the system and only spraying with worm tea twice this is what the plants look like……??????????.....not good but this tells me you really can grow plants min. effort with AP.