it was a bit ruderer then i ment, but i think it's silly to say the the biopod is such a better place for raising bsf maggots. the only thing the biopod does better then a decent homemade unit is help harvest the maggots.

to have a decent homemade unit all you need is:

1. make sure the container isn't to big/small for the amount of feed you add.

2. make sure it's ventilated to help get rid of heat.

3. make sure the female can lay eggs in a place where the hatched maggots can easily find food. this is easily accomplished with step 2.

4. if you're feeding them foods that contain a lot of water you need to account for the liquid they release. btw, i've yet to see this 'tea' help my plants. i really do hope it does.. I'm actually letting a gallon of it 'finish composting' and them I'm going to apply it to some plants in a more controlled way then i did last time.

drawbacks I see to the Biopod...

1. expensive

2. with the biopod you're kinda stuck with the size of the compost area. if you have a lot more or less compost, you may run into problems... i guess you could buy the more expensive, yet larger, biopod version. is that one in production yet?

2. you can build very efficient units from recycled materials around your own area. These units are built in.... Vietnam right? Maybe the wrong country but they are being built in SE Asia. Globalism/consumerism and a lot of shipping things around the world. I dug my unit out of large trash pickup in my neighborhood.

3. doesn't address the problem of waste disposal in poor rural communities where this sort of technology would be HUGE just for the sanitation point of view. bsf should be able to be put to use with items people find right around their area for cheap. i've seen this done with biogas to turn human waste into cooking/lighting gas fuel.

I've also come up with my own solution to harvesting maggots. I drink coffee every morning and the maggots love coffee. Every night I put my coffee grounds in a small plastic starter pot and then set that on the top of the compost in my bsf unit. During the night the maggots crawl up through the holes in the bottom of my pot and the next morning the pot's absolutely teaming with maggots. I just through the maggots/coffee grounds into the fish together. This also allows me to feed my fish maggots in all life stages, not just the huge/hard pupa that are heard to eat for smaller fish.

Like I said, I think the biopod is a cool deal. Whenever I think about designing a bsf unit I do think about how the biopod does it. but ultimately i don't think it's any more necessary to have a biopod to successfully raise bsf then to have one of those expensive compost tumblers to make compost. i also think people need to be careful about claims they make.. the bsf tea is one thing ive seen described as great fertilizer, yet i've to see any noticable or provable result.

another thing i have a personal aversion to is sending bsf to places where there aren't any bsf already. i live in texas and we used to not have fire ants, killer bees, asian tiger mosquitoes, tilapia, zebra mollusks, hydrilla, duckweed, camels... ok, who doesn't like camels lol. the road to hell is paved with good intentions.