 Any questions you have or anything that we don't get answered today or Or you have questions afterwards There's my email address Hick see at Lincoln you dot edu I'll answer any emails Hopefully within 24 hours if I don't have three or four hundred to do in one day but Is there anybody here today that is involved in Aquaponics at this time You want to describe your system for us first before we get started? My system isn't really much of a system. It was an experiment. I've had it for two years The big drawback to the thing is it's indoors. I had to put it in my Shop in a place where there's no windows and I've got artificial light for it So that's probably the biggest drawback and the second thing is that Because of that everything in the shop rests My system is basically a table that is And these are going to be round numbers, but it's probably 10 feet in length It's about 40 inches in width it's 12 inches deep and it's full of pea gravel Underneath that table I have a tank And the water flows First of all the water Fills the the table and I've got it on a timer and then it dumps into the tank where I've got a pump And this pump will recirculate the water back into the fish tanks I've got two 250 gallon totes and Believe one of them has catfish in it and the other one has minnows in it They all used to have minnows in them But when I put the catfish in one way the water can flow from one to the other There's a two-inch pipe along the floor So that the first one drains into the second one and the men has got out of there in a hurry I Suppose that's a rather brief description. The other thing is I'm able to keep my water at a steady temperature And I think that probably helps so that's a brief description Thank you for that and Maybe if somebody is just getting started that you ought to talk to this gentleman If you're interested in starting a small system Do you sell anything that you produce from it you consume it yourself? What type of plants are you? Growing in your aquaponics system Okay, let's talk a little bit about aquaponics systems Now I call them integrated aquaculture systems For one reason Essentially you have two biological systems and You're actually attempting to produce two different types of Biological organisms one of course is your producing fish which are Produced to enhance the plants But these are really essentially two different biological systems and unfortunately they have different biological needs and The two in fact Don't completely Compliment each other if you approach it from a scientific basis Now, what do I say that? Well, first of all fish are extremely efficient Utilizers of feed They're probably one of the most efficient organisms on the earth as a result What you get out of a fish Is only a little bit of nitrate and a little bit of phosphate Now a plant requirement. It's a much different than that So Some way or other you must supplement What other the what other needs that the plant has? And this is why I call it integrated aquaculture And this is just Kind of a diagram depicting a system Where you have the plants out here and you have the aquaculture tanks and Any other component parts in here? Now most systems that are very successful Have more than just water going from the aquaculture system straight to the plants and the reason for that is a couple but one in particular is The greatest amount of waste that comes off of fish Actually is in the form of ammonia and Ammonia is in solution in the water Now most plants don't like to have ammonia directly They don't utilize ammonia directly. There are some strawberries. Well some others don't So in in in fact that ammonia must be converted to a use Utilizable product Okay, what is utilizable by a plant nitrate? That's why you have the fish air So that ammonia has to be converted To nitrate before you can utilize it in the plant system How do we do that? Well in a complex system We have Different types of filters There'll be a filter first that will remove the settable solids or the solid material in the water and that then Can be used as a supplemental It can't really be called a fertilizer because it's so low in nitrate and phosphate, but it can be used as a Soil preparation you can dry it You can inject it you can utilize it in many ways So but in order for you to convert that ammonia in the water You've got to get those solids out of there So you have to have to have a filter that removes the solids after it comes out of the fish Okay now We've got this water coming out of the fish and it's Ammonia laden and you can't recirculate it back through the fish because ammonia is toxic to the fish So you utilize a biofilter system Where there are bacteria in there and there's a media that these bacteria grow on and that converts The ammonia to nitrites and then there's another bacteria that converts it to nitrates Then that nitrates can be circulated through the plants and they will utilize it to grow Now is this a perfect marriage? A lot of people think so, but obviously it is not Because plants need much much more than just nitrate and phosphate. They need other micronutrients They need metal salts Especially the first thing you'll see if you don't supplement is you'll see that your plants will be getting chlorotic Beget light color. That means that they don't have maybe iron or some other metal in order to have the chlorophyll necessary to carry on Deficient of photosynthesis and if that doesn't happen then your plants don't grow Now there's basically two kinds of systems that are Being operated today this one is a substrate system and most of these systems are smaller and Not necessarily Built on a commercial basis, but utilized for home use and hobby use Why is that is because the effluent from the fish usually goes right into the substrate and The substrate itself operates as the bio filter But you're also When you're putting that from the fish into the substrate You're also putting in the solids material and sooner or later that substrate will clog So you'll either have to remove it and change it and start over again or Get rid of the solids before You put it into the substrate And Removing the solids is an expensive proposition and probably one of the most expensive pieces of equipment Even in an aquaculture recirculating system where we have to remove all the solids now The other type is a floating raft system Now these have been most six the more successful in producing large volumes of plant crops In the floating raft system and this these are just half inch pieces of Like that insulation you use on the outside of your house before You put the outer layer on and you drill little holes in it and you Stick your plants right in there And you float that right on top of the water That is coming from the fish system This is a picture of one of the most successful ones that uh Aren't existence and uh You'll notice This is in a climate that has all around growing season So they have a great advantage But you'll notice that the fish system is pretty small in relation to the plant system And normally The ratio between fish In plants is somewhere between one to ten To one to fifteen So that means you don't have too many fish really In a small system to produce enough nitrate In order to grow the plants, but that doesn't still Supplement the micronutrients. You still have to supplement those for to be effective Where is this this is uh way down Pardon me It's a virgin island is correct. Dr. Roquecy is the one that That has developed this system and uh It's been uh pretty successful But in talking to him he will admit that he also Has to uh supplement Some liquid Fertilizers That contain the necessary micronutrients In order for him to grow To get good plant growth. This is mostly lettuce And in a small system one of the most important things is Is that you got to be able to sell That vegetable product whatever it is At a pretty premium price That means that one of your greatest skills In an aquaponics system is going to be what? Marketing exactly You got to be a good marketer and you got to get a premium price In order to make this thing Even pay for itself Especially in a home small system Now if you don't care what it costs you With a small system doesn't make any difference If you want to produce enough for your own use Now those that are most successful raft systems Similar to this one Produce high-end herbs And they put them in a little fancy packets and they sell them for a buck a piece And they probably weigh an ounce or Two ounces or something else Well that's a high profit margin And those places are able to keep operating Now again, this is a raft system and this is a large one Indoors And the fish system set In another Building Now why would you have the fish system and another building first of all? You really don't want the fish system And under the same kind of conditions that you have the plants first of all You don't need a lot of light to grow fish Also light is disadvantage To growing fish because it produces algae As soon and algae gums up everything You'd have to control the algae in your fish system Because it'll plug up all your valves and everything else in time If it has exposed To strong sunlight So essentially you want to have this fish system separate Here's a combined system and a lot of these systems are in existence If you ever want to see two Outstanding operations They're in walkie, wisconsin growing power And then there's one called green acres and In this one in particular This is a community project and it's a nonprofit But they produce a lot of food that's sold Within the community and it's an excellent community project And there's one thing that's really important then To understand in these systems All the labor is free Now if you want to pay for your labor, that's a whole different thing If you want to make some money while you're working at it So you have to be a little careful on how you do this And you have to approach it as a business Again, um This is a combined system where the plants are on the top And then the fish are in the bottom tank Why are they on the bottom? Keep them away from the light So you don't have a lot to algae grow Now you can see these systems are mainly built out of wood And they're just lined with plastic Uh, that's actually the best way to do it You know is to utilize your own talents and building your system And I can guarantee you There are all types of sales people out there That will tell you that they have the best system for aquaponics Any ought to buy this But I guarantee you if you look into the information enough And decide what your system should be like and then build it yourself That it'll be better And it'll produce more of what you want Than what somebody else there's a lot of snake oil when it comes to aquaponics There are many many many snake oil salesmen out there and you got to be really careful Because they have products they like to sell This again is Two different types of systems This again is a system that utilizes The media to put the plants in This one is just a tube system where the water runs through And this is similar to the floating wrath system only they're Utilizing PVC piping To put the plants in Both systems work on a small basis um Now years ago And this must have been 10 years ago. I visited the system Up near Peoria, Illinois And it was being operated by 8am and everybody knows 8am Uh, they had 13 acres of greenhouses And then they have large they had large Uh fish tanks with tilapia in them And not only did they have that but it was right beside A uh biochemical Plant that was producing Some type of a diesel fuel As a result they had waste heat so they piped all that waste heat Into their 13 acres of Greenhouses so that they could Operate year around The first thing they found out it it wasn't economically efficient to have the fish so they got rid of the fish And the second thing they found out they were producing 33,000 heads of lettuce a day And it couldn't make any money in it So all i'm saying is that It is extremely difficult With an aquaponic system To Make to make it a business And to make money with But it can be a very good hobby system And if you are a good enough marketer And produce a product that's in demand You can Produce some income for yourself And again, i'm not saying that you can pay for all your labor Depends upon what your you think your laborer is worth and uh So it's it's it's somewhat difficult To make money, but they make really good hobby systems They also make good hop systems for schools because You have two different biological organisms That can be utilized in science experiments And the animals themselves can be utilized In in biology classes So within a school system They're pretty good also the only problem with In the school system is we run up against the same thing they want to get started But then in the summer everybody wants to leave Well, what do they do with the live fish and the plants and everything when everybody wants to go? They have to be taken care of daily And just like any other live system where you're working with live animals You have to make sure That your pumps are running if the electricity goes off you've got to have something You got to have a generator And and it's got to be there that you can start immediately So that you're circulating water through the fish so In order to have a system that's a commercial basis That means you got to have backup That means you need a a backup generator now If you don't want to put that alarm under your bed Which you almost have to do if you're going to get the generator started Fast enough to get the pumps going Keep your fish alive Then you got to have an automatic switching System for your generator and those are extremely expensive Now within our recirculating systems At Lincoln University where we do most our research We have to have backup generators Which are on automatic systems And uh We run them once a week just to make sure That they come on And everything works And you have to do that with backup systems any time you've got live animals It's not like having a cow stand out there and she Hanging her head today and you call the vet And it can't even take a blood sample And then you take care of the cow and and improve her health Changes in the fish system can occur just almost In minutes And you got to be able to make Some type Of adjustment When that happens Now again, this is just a diagrammatic Design of a double cured system And these systems work pretty well And you see the plants are on the top Of course the second one You'd have to use artificial light in it And then these are mainly built of wood And they use heavy PVC liners Inside to hold the water And these are the least expensive way to do Although that you can you can purchase Inexpensive tanks at most farm stores That'll work for your fish systems And the PVC piping can be purchased there also So the components are all on the shelf You don't have to buy a unit in order to do this And this is just the basics of a hobby system Where you have the plants on the top and the fish in the bottom And the fish waste is going in there And I'm saying if you're going to have a big system though You're going to have to have a bio filter And a filter to get rid of the solid waste also But in a hobby system In five years if you want to You can change the media Even though it gets all clogged up If it's just pea gravel Well you change it in five years Or whatever it takes for it to get clogged up And then it'll also work again as the bio filter Now again this is another hobby system And this works quite well For that's just a big tank cut in half And on the bottom the fish and you have a small pump And it runs up to the top And the vegetables are on the top Any questions so far? Are they anything? Yes sir Pardon me We have hydroponic systems And we supplement them from our separate aquaculture systems But we don't have a system Which is completely tied together They're in different buildings and there are pipes that run the affluent through But again this all goes through a filter system first Before it goes into the hydroponic system I'm going to show you sources of information Where you can get basic design criteria And so that you can build whatever system you would like to Now the Southern Regional Aquaculture Center Put all you got to do is put SRAC in your computer and search And when you get that site you go to publications and then guide sheets And they have a nothing this is all free information And I really like it because it's all based on science There's no hyper or anything else nobody's trying to sell anything But everything that they've done here they have actually Tried and it's proven to be Workable on a regular basis and it doesn't take any great great scientists to do it And the other one is ATRA Which is a national sustainable agriculture information system It has many publications and a great discussion on aquaponics And I think you can just enter ATTRA And come up with that and it'll have specific designs or specific designs for Small school systems small home systems Commercial systems or any type that you want and it discusses the difference between the floating raft systems and The media type of systems now again, I want to emphasize that Uh fish are really only incidental to growing plants in water And uh as I mentioned in the beginning The ratio of space Is about one to fifteen that means you gotta have a lot of plant space to take care Of the nutrients that you're going to have available Uh, I had a person call me the other day and they say This is working out pretty well, but boy my plants are getting yellow already And uh I said well you can either do this you can put a rusty nail in there Which may help Or some metals Or you can get a liquid supplement That is balanced You can get a small bottle from the From your local farm store or from A nursery and it won't be very inexpensive and you can Drip in a little bit every week or something like that and it'll provide the micronutrients The plants need to grow Yes, sir Pardon me Well, uh At this time There is not a fish feed That is certified So, uh It's difficult to say that you want to be certified organic if the fish can't be And uh until they come up with the How to have a certifiable fish now The biggest contention is that The reason that fish can't be certified organic is Because one of the components In fish feed is fish meal and fish oil Well, uh Fish fish meal Is considered a non sustainable product Because it's actually obtained from harvesting Menhaden anchovies And those types of fish in the ocean which there are finite populations However, if you only harvest at What they determine as sustainable levels because they do reproduce And the oceans do produce a lot um Aquaculture in itself uses less than 10 percent Of the fish meal Fish meal as a commodity Is a tremendous commodity over the world now Why is fish meal like that? Well, for instance, it's used a lot in a lot of dairy fees Because cows produce more milk But do you even on organic milk? Do you see On that bottle or on that container? This contains fish meal No, but they still certified but they won't certify fish so It's an advocate thing rather than a scientific aspect and this is where the difficulty lies in getting Organic certification for certain things Yes, sir You want to talk to the mic one of the things I had seen and doing just a little bit of research on this was Like growing duckweed. I guess has a feed for the tilapia. I mean, obviously you'd have to have You know a pond or something. Have you seen any systems that produce their own feed for them? Growing duckweed is pretty easy uh Most ponds grow up or even though most people don't want it Okay, why Does a pond have duckweed on it? It's got too high of a nutrient level. Okay, too much nitrogen go into it Yeah, you can harvest duckweed and feed it to tilapia But here let me go on here Let's talk a little bit about financial aspects And then we'll get back to duckweed um There is no aquaponic modeling Where you actually can take a model and then you can scale it to your size That will be successful And can produce a profit Why not? Well, there's a lack of aquaponic data which meet The scientific standards required to actually develop the models uh There's an awful lot of information on hearsay On aquaponics, but there's very little scientific information on aquaponics An awful lot of success depends On your skill level And this greatly Differs greatly between individuals What is your skill level in keeping those fish alive? Fish are difficult to keep alive even tilapia, which is the most commonly Raised fish because they're pretty fur forgiving Actually, I'd rather grow a carp Because they grow faster in tilapia And I don't have to eat the water commercial viability Don't believe everything you hear Build your own experience And then you determine What is the commercial viability because As I say, there's snake oil salesmen out there and They'll tell you you can make piles of money, but It's very difficult um Anybody that wants to start out start out like this man start out small Utilize your Information and your experiences To advance your skill In your system Now if you make money At it good Then you can take that money and you can invest it back in And make it larger And that's Not only the most successful way that people Run aquaponics systems. That's the most successful way People run any aquaculture systems complex aquaculture systems They start out small they build on their experiences And then as they make money They invest it back in And grow All the people that you see that are successful In aquaculture and there are many people that have made A lot of money in aquaculture But it's been a very Difficult and it takes a lot of learning in order to do it And they spent many years in doing it, but they started out small And they learned a lot when they had small systems Systems which include D gassers and when I mean to gassers Fish give off carbon dioxide And sometimes you have to get rid of the the carbon dioxide and add oxygen If there isn't enough in the water otherwise the fish won't survive And biofilters have the most effective to operate and if you're not growing tilapia These two systems will have to be included In your system because There the water quality has to be Of good enough value that those fish can survive in it only tilapia Will survive in water that is less quality And I've seen I've seen people kill Tilapia also because the water quality wasn't Good enough, so it's not a panacea to do to the fish now tilapia is probably the most successful species in the u.s aquaponics industry now if you query aquaponics in On the internet you can find a lot of information. They're doing a lot of work in australia Down there they're raising cobia a high-end species demands high prices When they do these types of species though they require very high water quality And they're complex recirculating systems And they're just shunning off some of the water for the plant systems That is The ammonia is already converted to nitrates any system Now tilapia in missouri Is not an approved species. It's not on the approved species list and the That list can be accessed On the missouri department of conservation site You can raise tilapia in missouri With a special permit From the director of the conservation department Now what are some of the requirements first of all? Any system with tilapia must drain into an approved waste treatment system And that must be approved by dnr What is an approved waste system? Well, I've seen them confiscate tilapia from a fish producer where The effluent From the system now if you got water you're going to have some effluent It's got to go somewhere so Their effluent went through a Two-pound system had no access to go anywhere else and They confiscated 60 000 tilapia Because that's not an approved system that means If your effluent goes into a city treatment plant yes You probably can get a permit to operate it and utilize tilapia as a species If it goes into a septic system that depends on The dnr whether they approve it as a approved system So you want to be careful And you have to get this permit The best thing to do is to contact your local conservation agent in that county and Have him be involved In the development of your program and the development of your system And he'll be aware of it then And then they'll send out a bio just who will inspect it And see if it meets their criteria if it does It'll go to the director and he'll send it to the Regulations committee and the regulations committee will decide Whether you should have a permit or not Otherwise, it's not legal for rearing in missouri Okay, any questions you want to talk Do we need to have a um license even for just a hobby aquaponics? Anytime you have tilapia and you're rearing them you need a permit yes they're non-native species And they're concerned with Utilizing tilapia is just like what happened with Chinese carp in the big rivers They essentially got a better hold in a system than the native species And they have supplanted the native species habitat in the big rivers silver carp big head carp grass carp, they're all those Yes, sir My question was why did adm get rid of the fish? Pardon me you said the adm had an aquaponics system and they got rid of the fish They confiscated any yeah, that's okay. They confiscated the fish. Okay. I missed that part. Yeah my other question was I heard a little bit about using composting worms in the media-based Beds do you have any comments or knowledge on that using? I've seen systems where they utilize app Well, let me tell you you're managing biological systems And each one of these systems has to have a certain balance And if you got them tied together Those balances have to meet the requirements of the other biological system And every time you add something it just gets more difficult It gets more difficult and balanced when you have worm systems Then and you utilize water if you return water or anything else like that any ph problems depending upon the soil type depending upon how much if it's a If it originates from limestone Areas where this high calcium carbonate which is good for fish Otherwise you'll have a low pH problem and the fish really won't do well In that low pH So you got a you got a maxi systems and every time you add one it just gets more difficult Yes, sir You keep mentioning a 1 to 15 ratio. How are you measuring the fish and the plants? I'm just I'm essentially measuring surface area of water And you base uh Your density of fish on the surface area of water like maybe A quarter of a pound per gallon Something like that And and then you use your multiplier that way Yes, sir The two questions somebody mentioned duckweed earlier But are there other on-farm sources of fish feed that you could use? We wouldn't have to purchase the feed and the second question is Maybe answer that and I'll ask the second The first question was Utilizing duckweed as a feed uh tilapia will do well on Duckweed and algae, but you'll still have to supplement it With some fish food because it doesn't contain everything they need either Now remember one one reason they have fish feeds is because They are about uh, they are balanced amino acid complex No matter what the feed stuff is That they utilize for the major protein source There is a balance of certain amino acids that Are required by that fish So the fish feed is Is ingredients Are put in there with that in mind So you would have to supplement it, but you can utilize it they will do Pretty well on even algae in the water suspended algae In the water, but they wouldn't grow as fast As if you were feeding them a balanced feed I've experimented a little bit with systems using sort of Backyard swimming pools three four five thousand gallons stock with catfish And just taking the water out and using that water for For watering my plants and then just supplementing with fresh water as the water level goes down So and not easy to comment on any of the has there been other research done on those kinds of systems. Yes, uh, there's there are systems where These people are primarily in the aquaculture business. There's a large trout system in wisconsin Where they and of course where you use it where you grow a trout They don't really recirculate the water. They just run them through once And then it becomes effluent so they have a Large effluent to take care of it. Well, they use it for irrigating their wheat field Now some of that water is returned, but it's not returned to the fish system. They use it for other irrigation So that works out. Well, and it does help it adds nitrogen and phosphate To that field that it wouldn't have otherwise And at the same time You're getting rid of it because you can't Have it as a discharge Because you probably wouldn't be allowed to discharge it into a stream. So you're getting rid of the nutrients And that works other on farm sources of fish food On farm sources Uh Well The ingredients in fish feed Some of them are difficult to get on an individual basis Especially even with tilapia feed. There's usually some Fish meal And that's a commodity that unless you buy tons and tons The price is going to be so high And the other thing is most of the fish feeds today Uh, especially the tilapia feeds catfish feeds Utilize soybean meal as the primary protein source Well, there are in soybean meal There are anti materials in there That won't allow fish to digest it In order to get rid of that you got to heat it to a high temperature and this is why they utilize The type of systems they do to produce the pellets And it has a high temperature and it gets rid of those anti Anti items in the feed that affect the fish And when the feed comes out then It is suitable for the fish and uh these types of Pieces of the equipment again are very expensive Even to have a tabletop one to build experimental feed Is expensive and it's cheap actually cheaper to go to mfa and buy a bag of Low protein feed if you're feeding tilapia you can feed A fish feed that's 32 to 32 36 percent protein That's a low protein feed If you feed trout It's 45 to 55 some of the starter feeds are 65 percent Protein and most of the protein In that type of a feed is from fish meal Which is about 1900 a ton But even the ingredients In other fish feeds like soybeans have gone up higher And and fish feed prices have increased also But the fish again are incidental to a small system The rule of thumb If you can sell enough fish to pay for the operational costs Of Your plant system You got it made And if you have a plant that you can market at a high enough price you can make some money So that's a way that you ought to approach it if you want to do it On a little bit bigger basis than a hobby basis Anything else? I appreciate your time Anybody wants anything further or I can direct you To more detailed information just email me I'll see what I can do. Thank you