TOP TEN MISTAKES MADE BY aquaponic growers BRIGHT Copyright © 2015 TABLE OF CONTENTS IS THIS E-BOOK RIGHT FOR ME? ....................................3 ABOUT THE AUTHOR ......................................................4 ABOUT BRIGHT AGROTECH ..........................................5 THE TOP 10 MISTAKES: 1) UNUSABLE OR HARD-TO-USE FARMS ..........................................6 2) INADEQUATE CIRCULATION/SOLIDS REMOVAL/OR BSA .........7 3) POOR QUALITY WATER ................................................................9 4) UNDERESTIMATING PRODUCTION AND SYSTEM COSTS .........10 5) BIOLOGICAL VIABILITY VS. ECONOMIC VIABILITY....................11 6) CHOOSING THE WRONG CROPS..............................................12 7) SYSTEMS THAT HAVE POOR TRACK RECORDS..........................14 8) LACK OF PEST CONTROL STRATEGY..........................................16 9) GROWERS GET GREEDY .............................................................18 10) FAILURE TO APPROACH MARKETS CREATIVELY......................19 CONCLUSION.................................................................21 2 Back to Top IS THIS EBOOK RIGHT FOR ME? The learning curve of aquaponics is littered with the remains of failed aquaponic ventures and millions of dollars in lost investments. This e-book acts as a guide for beginning aquaponic growers who are interested in operating successful aquaponic systems- whether commercial or hobby systems. This guide will detail 10 of the obstacles which I have encountered again and again on this learning curve and through various consulting experiences with other aspiring aquaponic farmers. Why focus on mistakes? Because let’s face it, we learn a heck of a lot more through our mistakes and failures than we do through our successes. And, the most successful farmers see mistakes as opportunities to learn and improve their farms. I encourage you to learn from these mistakes and keep them in mind when starting or scaling your own aquaponics system. Doing so will save you a lot of heartache and/or financial despair associated with these 10 mistakes. 3 Back to Top 1 ABOUT NATE STOREY Nate Storey earned his Ph.D. in Agronomy from the University of Wyoming researching aquaponic production, novel produce sales, and distribution models. As part of his research, Nate quickly discovered a market need for hydroponic growing towers and invited two friends to join me in serving this need with a product we knew could outperform anything on the market at that time. Bright Agrotech was founded in 2010 in Laramie Wyoming in a garage. In 2011 we won what was then the UW Ellbogen 10K business competition and moved into office space and mentorship at the Wyoming Technology Business Center (WTBC). Around the same time we moved all of our manufacturing to a storage unit on the south side of town in order to expand our labor-intensive manufacturing operations on a monthly basis. The work was tough, and the winters building ZipGrowTM towers by hand were tougher, but it was the cheapest place in town to serve our growing customer base and build our bootstrapped business. Meet the entire Bright Agrotech team here. BRIGHT 4 Back to Top 2 Bright AGrotech The Leader in Volumetric Farming and Live Sales BRIGHT AGROTECH Leader in Volumetric Farming & Live Sales At Bright Agrotech, we’re all about educating, equipping, and empowering people to take more control over their own food. From our educational resources to our ZipGrow™ Technol- ogy, we aim to make farming accessible to everyone from the backyard gardener, to the high school teacher to the commercial vertical farmer. We love seeing someone start with an idea to use space-saving vertical hydroponic produc- tion to grow better for themselves, their schools or their communities. While the media likes to pander to the fearful and freaked out, we try to share stories of innovation, hope, and small-scale success. It’s important to remember that change usually doesn’t take place (i.e., almost never) on a large scale. From the guy tinkering in his garage, the chef growing greens in her kitchen, and the Upstart Farmer growing incredibly fresh herbs a few blocks from a local grocery store, change and innovation takes place on the individu- al level, one step at a time. These relatively non-traditional farmers and innovators may seem small today, but they’ll be the ones feeding us tomorrow. For more helpful videos on aquaponics, hydroponics, vertical farming, greenhouse growing, and more, visit our YouTube Channel. 5 Back to Top 3 Growers Design Unusable or Hard-to-use Farms GROWERS DESIGN UNUSABLE OR HARD-TO-USE FARMS Designing an unusable farm is a mistake of inexperience more than anything else. Many growers haven’t grown before (at least not on a large scale), so they don’t think about work flow and efficiency. Often beginning growers don’t effectively use their available space to increase labor efficiency and lower labor costs in general. Remember: labor is the largest variable cost of production on any farm - aquaponic or otherwise! Growers who ignore this variable tend to design systems that are hard to harvest, that require lots of transplanting and tending work, or that are not conducive to pest control. In troubled systems, access to important system components is limited, making the space not only difficult to use, but dangerous! “Labor is the largest variable cost of production on any farm... Planning ahead will save you many headaches” The cure for this mistake is to think carefully from the start about how you will use your system, how you will harvest fish and produce alike, and how you can plan your system to be user- friendly and efficient. Consider all of your variables, from growing needs (light, water, nutrients, pests, etc.) to user needs (access, convenience, automation, redundancy, etc.) from the start, and only begin to design your system after you’ve seriously considered these variables. Talking to established growers and touring their system designs can be a great help as well. Be sure to ask questions and find out what they would do differently if designing their systems today. 6 Back to Top 4 INADEQUATE CIRCULATION, SOLIDS REMOVAL, AND BIOLOGICAL SURFFACE AREA (BSA) An aquaponics system needs to supply plants and fish with three things they both need to survive and flourish: 1) Oxygen rich water 2) A method for removing waste 3) Biological Surface Area Something that seems so simple is surprisingly tricky if we look at the number of fish-kills, plant disease outbreaks, and dead systems out there. Remember: aquaponic production is not something that you can just “wing,” especially with raft systems where everything depends on circulation. This is a fundamental problem with many systems, and often it’s disguised as something else. Think strongly about your growing media. 7 Back to Top 5 More on the 3 culprits of poor system design... THE 3 CULPRITS OF THE POOR DESIGN SYSTEM Poor Circulation = Poor Oxygen Content in Your Water Systems with poor circulation will often be prone to plant and fish disease outbreaks, facilitated by plant and fish stress from poor dissolved ox- ygen content and/or ammonia accumulation. This is caused by lack of nitrification (either by poor delivery of ammonia-rich waters to nitrifi- cation sites or biofilters, or by lack of oxygen for aerobic nitrifying bacteria). Solids Removal Disease outbreaks can also be caused by oxygen consumption by plants, fish, and microbes followed by inadequate replenishment. This problem can be further complicated with poor circulation patterns or “pockets” in systems where solids and waste accumulate, consuming oxygen as they decompose. Biological Surface Area These circulation, solids removal, and biological surface area (BSA) issues can be prevented by better understanding the role of [grow] media and by using a media based system where it’s easy to maintain aerobic conditions. We use ZipGrowTM Towers (with specially designed matrix media) for this purpose, and others do just fine using media beds. While ZipGrowTM Towers are really the only realistic media-based aquaponic technique for commercial growers, both towers and media beds illustrate the benefits of high rates of oxygen exchange and high biological surface area. The more BSA a grower can have in their aquaponic system, the better, and operating a high-BSA system is much easier in the long run. Having a very high ratio of BSA to nitrogen input results in great biofiltration, solids breakdown and mineralization. 8 Back to Top 6 GROWERS START WITH POOR QUALITY WATER Good Water is Key! As with all farming and gardening, water quality is key! Many growers embarking on journeys into aquaponics start with basic water (high pH), or water containing carbonates that prevent the pH of the system from dropping for quite some time. Because of this, growers have a hard time getting their system down into the pH range where most crops plants are most productive. Fundamentally, this is a water quality problem that can be corrected with an Reverse Osmosis filter. However, most growers never correct this issue because they think that pH ranges above 7.0 are perfectly fine for commercial systems. This is a common problem that is complicated by traditional aqua- ponic thinking and many aquaponic “experts” who, to this day, will claim that 7+ pH ranges are great for commercial systems. Let me correct this for you. The proper pH for a productive commercial system will typically be in the range of 6.0-6.4. Traditionally, aquaponic systems ran at much higher pH ranges, and this practice still perpetuates today. This is utter nonsense. The thinking behind this “rule” is that nitrification will slow or crash at lower pH values. This is blatantly false and based on a number of aquaculture studies that didn’t take the requisite time to lower pH slowly and by increments, allowing the nitrifying bacteria to adapt and the bacterial population ecology to change. Acid soils around the world have healthy populations of nitrifying bacteria that oper- ate in much lower pH ranges than this, with high efficiency.