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Originally Posted By: keith_rowan
fish and worms, great system!
jkb: i'm not sure i understand.. you're saying that this wouldn't work for a fish like yp? are you saying tilpia are "sewer fish"? (because of how you've heard they're raised??)
i'm not doing aquaculture, but raising perch in a pool with tilapia and bluegill.. and not having any "slow death"?? issues...


Wrong answer, Next!!!

Ya only get one shot, so think about it.

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Ammonia?


Life is Good on Bremer Pond

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JKB, I know I'm new here but I'm gonna have a friendly disagreement with you anyway. I absolutly can raise YP in my rig. I've seriously considered it several times but couldn't see any advantage to it especially since I prefer to eat the Tilapia. When you weigh all the pros and cons, its about a wash between the two. YP sells for more money but they take more feed and time to get them to market size. Tilapia are tropical fish and like 80 degree water and can withstand temps clear up to near 100 while YP like 70 degrees but wont tolerate high temps so even though they don't take as much heat in winter, you gotta keep them cool in summer and YP are more difficult to breed. You also have to fillet 3 or 4 YP to 1 Tilapia. I have no idea what you mean by "slow death" so I can't comment. As far as your belief that Tilapia are sewer fish, I don't see any difference between them and chickens, hogs or any other animal that picks through the manure of another animal. Just natures way of not wasting anything. Steve

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Hi Dwight, If he is talking about ammonia, all I can say is that in May with 1000 pounds of fish in my 10 tanks and pouring 15 pounds of aquamax a DAY, my ammonia levels are very low. No slow death by ammonia here. Steve.

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Originally Posted By: fishandworms
Hi Dwight, If he is talking about ammonia, all I can say is that in May with 1000 pounds of fish in my 10 tanks and pouring 15 pounds of aquamax a DAY, my ammonia levels are very low. No slow death by ammonia here. Steve.

It was the first thing that popped into my mind. I am only an interested observer. What you are doing there is impressive to me. I have this 30' X 40' climate controlled area that............


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Steve -- you need to do a article, or a series of articles, in Pond Boss Magazine, about what you are doing.

Bob Lusk is very good at taking whatever you give him, and turning it into prize winning articles.

By the way, I think my tilapia here in the office saw the comments about being "sewer fish" and were less than happy with the slur against them and their relatives.

I've been doing aquaponics and cage culture for a number of years. I also fought hard to get tilapia listed as pond and aquaponics fish here in our state. I must say that tilapia are a pretty special fish for a lot of reasons.

They are the only species that made it through this entire season in my aquaponics system. It included fathead minnows, goldfish, green sunfish, bluegill, and tilapia.

We removed the tilapia from the aquaponics tank in late October when the water had gotten down into the 50 F degree area. I put them in a 78 F degree heated tank with some 2-3 inch bluegill that started out as yolksacs in the early summer. The male tilapia are still thriving, and have gotten to about 12 inches. They were about 8 inches last fall. The bluegill all died. The female tilapia all found ways to commit suicide.


Last edited by catmandoo; 01/11/14 07:31 PM.

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Steve you da man! Great system and I agree there is nothing wrong with tilapia as far as raising them and the taste! And obviously you have a market and you're selling them so that's always a plus. I raised my first tilapia in a small scale outdoor aquaponics system last summer and absolutely loved them. Hardy, fast growing, always hungry, produced a lot of nitrates and nutrients for my plants, and best of all they were delicious. No bad taste whatsoever!

Presently I'm growing out YOY bluegill and yellow perch that I bring inside to the basement for the winter to get added growth before planting male bluegills and female yellow perch back into the ponds. No doubt you could raise them in your system as long as they are feed trained.

I hope to build a pole building this year and move my trout that are presently outside inside to conserve water and increase the pounds of trout I grow out annually. I'm seriously looking at designing a system that utilizes airlifts to run the entire thing on air. Best part is air lifts are easily DIY. 10 watts to move 15 ft3 of water per hour (66 gpm)!


BTW what brand of RDF is that? Looks like you have about 4 ft3 of K1 in each barrel? What's the size micron mesh of your RDF?

Love the idea to have your biofilter barrels horizontal vs. vertical to save on space. Never would have thought of that. And obviously it works as I can see the media churning in there.

As far as the book Esshup brought up it can be found on Amazon for about $21.00. I don't think you need it but it's fun to read and get ideas. And the author covers tilapia extensively. And for that price you can't lose. Steve VanGorder, the author, also shows how to hatch tilapia in aquariums. I'm going to go that route at some point so I don't have to buy the tilapia.



http://www.amazon.com/Small-Scale-Aquacu...ale+aquaculture


If pigs could fly bacon would be harder to come by and there would be a lot of damaged trees.






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Originally Posted By: snrub
fishandworms, you say you are a truck driver. Do you ever see a day that you might become a full time fish farmer? Or after retiring from behind the wheel?

Reason I ask, you started out with the idea of raising some fish you were not afraid to eat. Now do you see income possibilities that might make it more worth while to be more than just table fare?

Lots of successful entrepreneurial businesses started as a sideline from a hobby or "just an idea".

snrub,
Yeah, I'll be 61 next month and I don't want to drive much beyond 65 so my plan is to make a few dollars selling fish. Thats if I can survive working 2 full time jobs in the meantime, Steve.

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Originally Posted By: DonoBBD


Watched your videos over and over trying to figure out the flow. It appears to me that you just run a pile of air to keep the water in the take moving so much that the particles end up going out the skimmers. High amount of air makes the waste partials light.

Do you stop the pumps to feed? How do you keep the feed from just shooting out the skimmers? Sinking feed high fat?

What my son and I see doing is to raise some of our perch that we trap out of our pond. Some young perch that are hatched in the pond but can over populate the pond quickly. Just wondering how many perch would equal one tilapia for your 25 fish per tank calculation. My son is so excited its not funny.

Cheers Don.

Don,
You're right about the flow. I've spent MANY hours and MANY dollars trying to figure out the best way to get the solids out of the tank early and this is the best way that I've come up with.

The water enters the tank at the top rear from the barrels above. It flows to the bottom and towards the front where a 6 inch airstone pumps the water and the solids up and toward the skimmer.

I don't need to stop the pumps to feed because the airstone keeps the surface water flowing past and beyond the skimmer to the back of the tank. So as long as I dump the feed behind the skimmer, it just flows to the back of the tank and stays there. If your feeding sinking feed, some of it does end up in the skimmer but not much.

About the 25 fish per tank suggestion, one of the other guys responded about using weight instead of the number of fish and he was right. My suggestion is 1 pound of fish AT HARVEST WEIGHT per 5 gallons of water. So if your perch will weigh 1 pound, you shuold be comfortable with 50 fish in your tank.

Keep it fun and your son will stick around. When it becomes more work than fun, well you were young once. Steve

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