Aquaponics

Jlant85

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Sup ladies and gents!

Been awhile since i've been active on this forum.... first off... How have you guys been ^_^ me myself is doing alright... To all new members... WELCOME! =)

Now to the point... My family and I are on the process of moving once we do find a house that we can buy... with that said, my wife gave me the permission to finally let me build a pond on the back yard when the time comes... its not going to be a huge pond due to the fact that I want to keep some turtles in there... reason being is, i want spotted turtles... I've done my fair share of gathering infos on the little guys and im super excited about it! I've raised and breed Greek Tortoise (T.G. Graecas) so im fairly knowledgeable on the DOs and DONTs...

With that in mind, I wanted my pond to be part of an aquaponic system where i can grow food... Any of you guys have ever done this? Since turtle waste are a lot more compaired to fishes, i figure its not really a good idea... Also due to the salmonella... For the mean time, I do plan to grow some food on the aquaponic system for my tortoises just so i can cut down on the cost...

Would love to hear you guys opinion...
 

Anthony P

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Swamps, bogs, and vernal pools
I have a ton of experience with this now. I have been partnering with an aquaponics business for a few yeas now. I have yet to hear that anyone who does this with turtles actually eats the produce grown, because of the salmonella risk. It grows plants well, but no one is willing to take that risk.
 

Jlant85

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I have a ton of experience with this now. I have been partnering with an aquaponics business for a few yeas now. I have yet to hear that anyone who does this with turtles actually eats the produce grown, because of the salmonella risk. It grows plants well, but no one is willing to take that risk.

Well what i wanted to do was grow plants that i feed my tortoises... I figure why not? This way everything is put to use... I really dont want to take the risk of doing aquaponics for myself w/ turtles... maybe tilapia sure... but not w/ turtles...

I wanted to grow plantains, broadleaf and other weeds since they are so invasive and grows quickly... My thoughts are aquaponics would be great for growing those... specially since variations of weeds are great for tortoise diet... I want to know if anybody had success w/ those... growing the variety of weeds... other things i wanted to grow was things like green and red lettuce, kale and other food for my torts... I hear lettuce does great on those...
 

Jlant85

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I also like the idea of it being a great filtration system...
 

tglazie

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Sorry for jumping into this convo late, and I am by no means an expert, but I would figure that risk of disease transmission would be fairly low, so long as you kept the population density of your turtle pond low. My experience in this regard is a little different, but I would use the water in my painted turtle pond to irrigate my tortoise grazing fields in the spring. Now, this isn't the same as what you are planning, but basically, once the turtles emerged from brumation, I would empty the pond via sump pump onto all the grazing fields. Water from the pond was always very rich with leaf litter and other random organic material blown into it over the winter, material which built up when the filtration system had been shut off the previous fall. Of course, spring rains would quickly dilute and wash away most of this stuff. Additionally, heavy rains in the spring and early summer often cause the turtle pond to overflow, with the spill over cascading into my female tortoise enclosures.

Now, I have never had an incidence of disease, but this isn't to say that I'm not taking any risks. However, as long as I've been doing this (approaching a fifteen years since I built the pond), I've never had an issue, so I decided this risk was acceptable. But I understand that it is entirely debatable, and I am by no means certain that my tortoises aren't harboring some low lying parasitic pathogens. Despite this, it has worked, and the alternative would entail not keeping any aquatic turtles. I do wonder, though, if it would be more acceptable if I kept European pond turtles instead of southern paints, if that would lower the disease risk substantially. I don't know. Curious, though.

T.G.
 
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