www.tilapiafarming.co.za
Rydawi Fish Farms
The SuperActiFlo Bio Media used in the FarmInABox bio filter and mechanical filter is a highly
efficient and user friendly media. The original media was developed some 10 years ago, for
waste water treatment and for fish farming. The spaghetti wheel design and the fact that the
media is buoyant and that is has a large surface area makes it an ideal bio filter medium.
The SuperActiFlo media is moved about by aerating the bio filter, this moving bed sloughs off any
dead bacteria and detritus ensuring the media remains active with healthy living nitrogenous
bacteria. The moving bed system requires very little maintenance and interaction and no physical
removal or cleaning of the media. The high surface is +/-900m2 per meter cube means much
smaller, more efficient filters to do the same job.
The FarmInABox bio filter is designed to handle a feed load of 4kg per day. The balance of filter,
feed, water volume and aeration provides the farmer with a farming system that is in balance.
The skills required by the farmer and the farm operators as transferred so that the systems
balance can be maintained easily. Healthy filters mean healthy water and healthy fish. Rydawi
Fish Farms has their own manufacturing for SuperActiFlo and have used, tried and tested it over
a decade. All of our FarmInABox systems and farmers depend on the results for achieving
production for their system.
Movement of media by aeration keeps SuperActiFlo alive and healthy and the bacteria colonies
doing the important work of breaking down Ammonia and Nitrites to Nitrates.
SuperActiFlo used as a mechanical and bio logical media for effective filtration
Industry News
In a bid to make up for a shortfall of high-quality nutritious food, some Canadian food banks are
growing their own produce – and even farming fish.
The Mississauga Food Bank recently launched AquaGrow Farms, where tilapia is being raised in
tanks and lettuce is raised through hydroponics, or without soil.
Executive director Christopher Hatch said the Ontario food bank is the first in Canada to be
producing its own fish.
“It’s not a complete solution, but it’s certainly in the right direction and it shows the community
we’re thinking creatively about how to solve this problem,” said Hatch.
There were just under 90,000 visits to food banks last year in Mississauga, Canada’s sixth
largest city with a population of about 720,000.
Donations of fresh food have been declining and higher food costs make it tougher to stretch
donated cash.
“People tend to want to give us a can of soup and box of Kraft Dinner, which is fine, but we’re
trying to also source higher-quality nutritional value food,” said Hatch.
A couple of years ago, he began exploring aquaponics – which combines aquaculture, or fish
farming, with hydroponics – and thought it could be a viable solution to raise nutritious food yearround.
It takes about six months for tilapia fingerlings to reach about a kilogram in size, at which point
they’ll be sent off-site for processing and packaging. The first harvest is expected at the end of
March.
The fish are the vegetable farmers, in a sense, as their waste, which is converted to nitrate,
fertilizes the plants, says farm supervisor Colin Cotton. He’s experimenting with growing
buttercrunch and romaine lettuce.
“From seed to salad is about 60 days at the moment and we’re trying to cut that down to about
45 days,” he said.
“Every week we harvest 36 heads of lettuce and that goes out to our member agencies all across
Mississauga. We’re estimating in a year we can feed about 11,000 servings of lettuce so that’s
pretty significant for such a small setup.
“It’s already having a big impact in the community. We’ve been getting some feedback from
clients who have received this lettuce and they have been very happy and feel very fortunate to
have received this fresh lettuce especially when it’s dark and grey outside.”
Clients of a food bank depot in Surrey, B.C., part of metro Vancouver, will also be the recipients of
leafy salad greens, thanks to hydroponic growing walls donated by Ethan O’Brien, founder and
owner of Living Garden Foods.
During O’Brien’s last semester in a sustainable community redevelopment program at Simon
Fraser University, students were challenged to find an organization in the community to which
they could provide assistance.
“I thought why don’t we talk to some local food banks, see what their problems are and see if
maybe there’s an avenue where we could use vertical farming in the food bank to address food
insecurity issues,” said O’Brien.
Two growing walls, each about two metres high by four metres wide, are being installed at Zion
Lutheran Church, which runs a food depot attended by about 80 families every two weeks.
One wall can support 80 plants and yield 182 to 272 kilograms of lettuce, Swiss chard, mustard
greens, kale or collards annually.
Students attending an elementary school within the church will take on the responsibility of
caring for the wall, says Marilyn Herrmann, executive director of the Surrey food bank, which
serves 250 to 300 families per day.
The types of items available at a food bank at any given time fluctuate, Hatch and Herrmann
said, so having a regular source of fresh salad vegetables, at least, will be helpful.
“I think people will appreciate the fact we’re looking at ways to increase our donations and we’re
giving kids and a church an opportunity to really do something quite creative and supportive,”
says Herrmann.
RYDAWI FISH FARMS INFOGRAPHIC
Please contact us if you need any assistance with your fish farming projects, purchase tanks or
fingerlings, or would like to visit the farm in Muldersdrift, Johannesburg.
The next training
programmes are the 3 – 7 April and the 8 – 12 May 2017.
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The Rydawi Team
March 2017