Let’s see how to transform your passion in an income. We will see here a nice way to make money with aquaponics.
Aquaponics is a nice passion. Indeed, it’s a good way to produce sustainable, tasty and healthy food at home in an eco-friendly way. The first step is often to experiment with a small backyard aquaponics. However, many people begin aquaponics with the idea to expend it. They aim for a profitable commercial size aquaponics setup.
Making money with aquaponics
Commercial aquaponics can be profitable but it often involves heavy investments. The question developed today is: can a backyard aquaponics be profitable? Can it produce enough to generate revenue or at least a side income? Most commercial aquaponics setups generate their profit through the vegetables sales. Backyard aquaponics can actually generate a significant profit margin. It can be the result of the fish sales. In this video you will learn a technique to increase the aquaponics yield per square meter.
Grow high value fish
Through fish production, you will be able to create a real aquaponics business. Yes, it is possible to design a backyard aquaponics for profit and to maintain it at a profitable level. The reality is that a lot of aquaponics keepers are growing fish with a low value per kilo. In contrast, some ornamental fish can reach a very high value. Furthermore, they are not particularly difficult to grow. Online platforms allow to penetrate the market for ornamental fish. They simply put private buyers and sellers in contact. Hence, it is easy to generate an income from your small scale backyard aquaponics. Here are few examples of ornamental fish species that can be grown in aquaponics. They have the particularity to have a real value and can generate a significant profit:
Gold fish
gold fish are nice and not very expensive when small. However, large gold fish can reach high price. It is not very difficult to find buyers as they are the most popular pet fish in the world.
Koi carp
Similar to the gold fish, the koi can actually reach huge sizes. They develop nice and looked after color patterns. This is also a very famous fish and it grows well in pond. The value of the best patterns can reach hundreds of thousands of US dollars. Those kind of prices are still exceptional. Don’t expect to develop such subject by chance in your setup. However, growing carps of a value of hundreds of dollars is very much achievable. You can do it in a small scale aquaponics.
African cichlids
Those fish are a bit more “advanced” or “connoisseur” fish. You will only be able to sale them if you live in the city. The chances that buyers live around if you are in the country side are very limited. Many species of African cichlids can breed in Aquaponics. Here are just a few African cichlids that could be grown and generate an interesting profit. I am thinking of the genders Cyphotilapia, haplochromis, melanochromis…
Now if you follow this business model, don’t get too excited. Don’t plan the same return on investment on a larger scale setup. It is often easy to sale a few ornamental fish online to some local passionate fish keepers. But it becomes way more challenging to find a market when you increase the production by 100 or 1000. This is the reason why most “large scale” aquaponics farms produce edible fish. They generate most of their income from the vegetables produced. Keep in mind that an aquaponics system generally produces 10 times more vegetables than fish. The vegetables can be sold at a significant price. This is thanks to the sustainability of the process that is more than organic. Consumers are often happy to pay more for a sustainable, local, tasty and healthy product. However, making money with a large scale aquaponics involves a marketing strategy.
You will probably be interested to discover my six steps to build and manage an Aquaponics system. Click here to access for free! Thanks and good reading 🙂
