How large a pond for food fish, and what kind of fish?

[Bearded Man]

I've had chickens, rabbits and a fair sized garden and am exploring the possibility of turning a mound of dirt that is about 6 feet tall, and 15 feet at the base (dirt/weeds converted to compost pile from tilling the garden patch by hand). I'm considering digging into it and turning it into a small pond. I am not sure that this pond would be big enough for first to breed and live, but I figured someone must know. The goal is to provide an additional source of food on my homestead. I will have chickens and a huge garden, as well as either a pig or a goat, but would like to consider fish as well. Yes, I'm into prepping...

[TomTX]

500 gallons, tilapia if you can keep it warm enough.

http://www.tilapiafarmingathome.com/Pages/default.aspx

[Bearded Man]

500 gallons worth of dirt this mound is not, and being in Western Washington, I doubt it is warm enough here to keep them. It was about 8 degrees below zero recently where I live just recently and is still damn cold..

[Greenroller]

You certainly could breed minnows that then could feed your chickens, greatly reducing the cost of feed while supplying them with great protin source. Their eggs will be beyond delicious! It's super low maintenance and very eco friendly.

[Left]

I like the systems that combine fish and vegetables so you get both from same space

[kpd905]

If you're in a cold climate, you could try buying some trout fingerlings in the spring and see how big they get by fall.  A lot of people use a greenhouse with aquaponics and a heater to extend the season for both the plants and the fish.

[Dances With Fire]

Could try some Bluegill, perch, catfish, or bass in the northern part of the country..??

[randommadness]

I like the systems that combine fish and vegetables so you get both from same space

Aquaponics.

Would love to try that some time if I ever have a yard or garage again.

[Jacana]

I would love to try an aquaponics systems too!

Would the pond be deep enough to avoid freezing all the way down in your worst winter weather? If it is above ground it may freeze deeper than a similar depth ground-level pond because it has less insulating soil. Also if it gets thick surface ice you may need to break it up.

http://inhabitat.com/diy-everything-you-need-to-know-to-build-a-simple-backyard-aquaponics-system/  suggests catfish as a cold climate high-density alternative to Tilapia. I wonder if that would work in a self-contained pond as well. If not, minnows for the chickens sounds like a cool idea. And you could harvest them all before the freeze and start over in spring.

[lthenderson]

From your description, I don't think you can turn your mound of dirt into a pond. Ponds need to be lined with a impermeable substance like clay otherwise the surrounding soil will just absorb the water and the entire thing will just be a mud pit. Most ponds are constructed by scraping away all the top soil and forming a dam out of clay. The top soil is spread around the edges and over the top of the dam to allow vegetation to regrow.

Tilapia is probably one of the easier food fish to grow. I have a friend who is growing a thousand of them in his living room as I write this. He started out with a pair and now he has them in several tanks according to size. Since it is indoors, temperature isn't a problem but he does have to filter and oxygenate the water continuously.

[teacherwithamustache]

Catfish are the "wild hogs" of the water.  It is very hard to kill them, they get big, they are found everywhere, and they eat anything.  My dad grows them in his back yard and this is his basic set up....  He bought an old swimming pool at a garage sale 3.5ft deep 15ft in diameter.  He has 2 bait pumps on the bottom  (dont buy a cheap one buy 2 good ones).  He goes fishing once or twice a week.  He throw nets bait for fishing and brings the extra bait home to feed his "pets" When he catches catfish that are too small to mess with he throws them in his pond and they become his pets.

He also has 12-15 pigs at his house.  He uses the inedible pig parts to feed the catfish and the inedible catfish parts to feed the pigs.  The catfish basically grow 1.5lbs per month.  He has started to document and measure the fish more because the grand kids think it is the neatest thing ever.  He has a good size veg garden and 10 avocado bushes.  He has gone 2 months out of just living off of the land (4 acres).  My mom thinks he is crazy.  I think he should start distilling liquor.

When it gets cold take a limestone rock or 2 and build a fire on top of it.  The rock will absorb a lot of heat.  Then when the weather drops add the hot rock into your pond.  Fish it out later and repeat the process.

[RyanAtTanagra]

He has gone 2 months out of just living off of the land (4 acres).  My mom thinks he is crazy.  I think he should start distilling liquor.

That's awesome, and made me laugh.

If you still have chickens/rabbits, a catfish pond is also good for disposing of the slaughter scraps.

I like the minnow idea for chicken food, never heard that before.

[Bearded Man]

From your description, I don't think you can turn your mound of dirt into a pond. Ponds need to be lined with a impermeable substance like clay otherwise the surrounding soil will just absorb the water and the entire thing will just be a mud pit. Most ponds are constructed by scraping away all the top soil and forming a dam out of clay. The top soil is spread around the edges and over the top of the dam to allow vegetation to regrow.

Tilapia is probably one of the easier food fish to grow. I have a friend who is growing a thousand of them in his living room as I write this. He started out with a pair and now he has them in several tanks according to size. Since it is indoors, temperature isn't a problem but he does have to filter and oxygenate the water continuously.

I planned on lining it with a liner I can buy retails or online. Why does he grow 1K of them? That seems a bit excessive. Is that all he eats? It's like Willard but with fish, lol.

[TrMama]

MMM did a post a while back on aquaponics. I think the "vessel" was based on using an old chest freezer since they're insulated.

[MrsPete]

It'd be cheaper -- though not necessarily prepper friendly -- to drive to a state park occasionally and do all your fishing there.

[Tom Bri]

I did this one summer (wife was gone!). Dug a pond about 2 feet deep and maybe 8 feet across. I went fishing and put all the surviving bluegills in. They survived until fall when we released them back into the wild. The bottom of the pond was an old swimming pool cover.

[Left]

I like the systems that combine fish and vegetables so you get both from same space

Aquaponics.

Would love to try that some time if I ever have a yard or garage again.

I saw someone do this in basement with heat/grow lamps on youtube
http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a-vertical-aquaponic-veggie-fish-farm-for-/

Has to restock fish but it keeps them fresh until needed.

Police might think you are growing things you shouldn't... keep a good log :D

[The_path_less_taken]

I have no link to it, but there used to be a survivalist show on last year...can't recall the name of it.

But a guy had just converted a backyard pool filled partway, with tilapia. The regular pool filtration system was sufficient, he claimed. The fish were a good size.

I agree that the modified aquaponics/aquatics is the way to go though: you grow food in the top, the fish are in the bottom....the fish poop virtually feeds the fish and they nibble a bit on the roots or whatever.

The minnow thing is interesting. Frogs might be easier to grow if you like frogs legs.

[lthenderson]

From your description, I don't think you can turn your mound of dirt into a pond. Ponds need to be lined with a impermeable substance like clay otherwise the surrounding soil will just absorb the water and the entire thing will just be a mud pit. Most ponds are constructed by scraping away all the top soil and forming a dam out of clay. The top soil is spread around the edges and over the top of the dam to allow vegetation to regrow.

Tilapia is probably one of the easier food fish to grow. I have a friend who is growing a thousand of them in his living room as I write this. He started out with a pair and now he has them in several tanks according to size. Since it is indoors, temperature isn't a problem but he does have to filter and oxygenate the water continuously.

I planned on lining it with a liner I can buy retails or online. Why does he grow 1K of them? That seems a bit excessive. Is that all he eats? It's like Willard but with fish, lol.

Well he started out with the pair and then thought wouldn't it be nice to grow his own food fish. He got the eggs to hatch and had hundreds of them. That is when he thought he would try selling them when they mature and he saved more eggs until he got to where he is now. I'm on his list to buy a number of pounds when that happens sometime early next spring.

[Bearded Man]

I believe I saw the doomsday preppers episode. He had chickens above the pool, which provided droppings/for the fish, and the fish water was basically fertilizer and fed a garden or something like that. It may not have been that episode, but I did see something like this on a show.

Seems like chickens and a garden are less hassle. The rabbits, although useful for providing fertilizer, were far too high maintenance. They produced much more offspring than I could get rid of fast enough. Not worth the hassle, and the meat needs to be prepared in a slow cooker type meal to be soft like chicken, otherwise it is a bit gamey (it does not BBQ well, unless it's really young maybe).

[Syonyk]

Tilapia is probably one of the easier food fish to grow. I have a friend who is growing a thousand of them in his living room as I write this. He started out with a pair and now he has them in several tanks according to size. Since it is indoors, temperature isn't a problem but he does have to filter and oxygenate the water continuously.

Tilapia are great - they're very tolerant of system failures that would kill other fish.  However, they're warm weather fish, so outside in a cold climate is not a great place for them.

Aquaponics on a yard scale can provide an awful lot of food and vegetables - it's really worth looking into in terms of a full system.

I believe I saw the doomsday preppers episode. He had chickens above the pool, which provided droppings/for the fish, and the fish water was basically fertilizer and fed a garden or something like that. It may not have been that episode, but I did see something like this on a show.

Probably not.  That sounds like a reasonable system that's easy to maintain and has high yields, so it wouldn't likely show up on DDP.

But, yes, a system like that works very nicely.  If your system is a close approximation of a naturally occurring system (like a pond), it's probably a good idea. :)

[Thegoblinchief]

To my mind, aquaponics is too input intensive to really fall under a prepping strategy.

I think your main problem is that the best fish for the climate will probably not appreciate the big temperature swings of such a small body of water above ground unless you're creating an artificial spring-fed pond by slowly filling - constantly - with a garden hose from a cold water source.

Trout straight up die when water gets too warm. The frosty fish guy (MMM's aquaponics author) is in a colder climate than you and he does trout only as a winter rotation. There's a place around here that does lake perch in a rather large stacked function op. They harvest in winter so I'm guessing they're more heat tolerant than trout.

What kind of fish do you enjoy eating?

To me Tilapia are garbage fish. Tasteless.

[Syonyk]

To my mind, aquaponics is too input intensive to really fall under a prepping strategy.

It depends heavily on how you feed them.  Tilapia, specifically, will eat damned near anything, so you can feed them kitchen waste, grow duckweed and algae for them, etc.

As far as temperature goes, my plan is a greenhouse and a thermal mass rocket stove for the deep winter.  Or just pull the fish in December and idle the system until March or so.

To me Tilapia are garbage fish. Tasteless.

I'll let you know when I've grown some, but people who are into it claim that the fish you grow taste radically better than the ones you get from the store.