Selecting The Right Aquaponics Technology To Use For Commercial-Scale Aquaponics

If you want to be successful in commercial aquaponics, you MUST employ an aquaponics technology that is proven to be profitable. What’s that mean?

It means it easily produces enough to cover its expenses, labor, and overhead; and produces a profit at the end of the year.

If it doesn’t produce a profit, it doesn’t matter how many tasty vegetables and fish it produces per year, it’s a HOBBY SYSTEM! Now, hobby aquaponics system have their uses; they are particularly good for learning about aquaponics at a small, affordable scale. Just don’t confuse them with systems that make a profit, or you’re liable to have a nasty surprise at the end of the year when you do the books!

(Below) When I look at this photo, I see a gorgeous woman holding a raft full of MONEY!

It’s important to ask yourself the question: What is my goal with aquaponics? If it is to make a profit, you MUST use a technology that’s profitable. If it’s just to experiment, “invent something new”, or have fun, we recommend doing it at a small scale to avoid wasting a lot of money. This free download of our E-Book “Aquaponics The EASY Way” will help you do that: the smallest system in this book can be built for less than $100 from stuff you get from Home Depot and PetCo.

But if you’re interested in making a living from growing food, if you use our proven, well-documented, and economical aquaponics system designs; then build and operate them exactly “according to the book”, we can guarantee your success growing produce. If you are reading this, you’ve come to the website with the most commercially successful aquaponic technology in the world.

If you have a large space available, such as a one-half acre to one-acre lot, and want to make either a part-time or full-time income from aquaponics, plus grow a lot more food for your family, a Commercial System of 2,500 or more square feet of raft area may be perfect for you. Woah! Isn’t 2,500 square feet a lot? Yes, and no.

You’re asking for a business that will support you full-time and replace your job, yes? Well, we’ve found through 9 years experience that a single person can handle up to 3,600 square feet of aquaponics system; so to be conservative, we say 2,500 square feet of aquaponics system area (not greenhouse area, this is not the same thing). 2,500 square feet is the minimum we consider to be a viable “commercial system”, and that is a one-person commercial system! Even so, you will have to be on the top of your game as a farmer, in marketing and communications, in understanding the technology, and finally, in working hard, smart, and clean. Aquaponics systems don’t make money by themselves, you make money by working them and growing stuff to sell.

So you’ve seen “System Kits”, and “Complete Systems”, and think that might be a magic bullet for success: We’ve seen websites offering aquaponics systems for sale that cost three to ten times as much as if you just bought the parts yourself. These inflated prices often do not even include all the materials necessary to build the system, nor shipping, nor construction and assembly. Assembly is a big expense for a commercially-sized system. No kit “assembles itself”, especially not on a commercial scale; they take the same amount of time to assemble as a pile of parts you bought yourself (for far, far less, BTW!).  So don’t go into buying a kit all starry-eyed, thinking it will be a magic potion for aquaponics, and will eliminate you having to learn this new career. They aren’t, and they don’t.

What the kit sellers won’t tell you is that the “stuff” is NOT the most important part of an aquaponics system! Aquaponics systems are just like computers: it’s the operating system and the software that makes it productive or not; it really doesn’t matter much who you buy the computer from. This is why IBM crashed and burned in the ’90’s; they didn’t realize how insignificant the computer itself really was in the sales equation. It’s also why MicroSoft became so successful; all they sold were the operating system and “the apps”; because everyone can sell equipment, but not everyone can write operating systems.

The most important part about any aquaponics system is the information you get to run it with (the “operating system”), so that problems are minimized and productivity maximized. These equipment sellers can’t include the experience gained during years of operating a commercial aquaponics farm, because they don’t have that experience. Many of them have been blinded by the money, and aren’t willing to be responsible for the failures they create with their lack of practical information about aquaponics.

Don’t bother with our technology if what you really want is to experiment:

Don’t bother with our technology if what you really want is to spend your money and time experimenting. We offer a path to successful and profitable aquaponics that we paid for with our money, our time, and our mistakes. If you want to make your own mistakes, you don’t need to spend any money on our products. A few of our students decided to experiment instead of have successful, productive systems; here’s a short list of things they have done that didn’t work:

If you think you have a great new aquaponics idea, we’d love to hear it, because we’re always interested in a better way to do things. Just in case, you might want to download this free PowerPoint slideshow and view it. It’s an analysis of the 8 largest aquaponics failures of the last 4 years, from $100,000 on up to $22 million. At least you will know to modify your “great idea” if you see it in the slideshow.

Although we guarantee our system technology, if you choose to ignore it, change things without understanding how they work, or “combine” our system technology with other system technologies, all bets are off and there is no guarantee. That would be silly if we offered one under these conditions, now, wouldn’t it?