For me some of the greatest challenges I faced when putting my system design together were :
  • Space
  • budget
  • ROI
  • ROI with Fresh, herbicide and pesticide free, ripe food
  • deciphering the massive amount of information that applied to my situation
  • deciphering the government regulations that applied to me, my system and situation



For some more details.

Space: I like many Utahans have a large home on a small lot. To make matters worse my home faces east making the small yard I do have shrouded in shade for 1/3 of the day. On top of that, to me you can't truly call something organic if all kinds of toxins rain down from the sky onto my food and if my water is contaminated by a wide array of chemicals.

Budget: I'm not independently wealthy. I'm thankfully not struggling as many are, but the costs and ROI need to make sense

ROI: How do you truly measure the value of ripe, unadulterated, fresh food. I mean I can look at what I spend on vegetables and small fruit every month (~120.00) but I am still trusting what someone who is financially tied to the purchase has to say about the product they're trying to get me to by. As a member of the Marketing world, I have little trust based on what I have seen so many of my colleagues do to make a buck.


Information: There is SOO much information out there. So many types of systems, so many applications. So many ways of doing things that boil down to how much you want to spend and what you have access to. Before marketing I went to U of U for Electrical Engineering and so I tried to boil a system down to some of the basics that would apply to any system and then build up from there. I listed the ones I felt were most important here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2063...6817796086661/


Regulations: In Utah Aquaponics is governed by UDAF (Utah Dept of Agriculture and Food) and the UDWR (Utah Dept of Wildlife Resources) IF you plan to Sell fish, breed fish, transport fish, have fished shipped in or apply for a fish not readily offered by Utah fisheries. If you plan to raise fish for your own use, use a non game fish (such as gold fish, koi, something from the pet store) or use a sterilized game fish, will not be transporting game fish (will instead pay the fishery to) you do not need a license or to register. HOWEVER before you get started I would simply suggest going to the UDWR website and calling the appropriate number (it's by county) or stopping by and having a chat. I spent days reading the info on the various websites and it was soo confusing. A 15 minute phone call cleared it right up and pointed me to EXACTLY what applied to me and what I needed to do.

For me personally I decided to go with Locally supplied sterilized rainbow trout and pay the fishery to transport them. This was the cheapest route I could find, requires no license or registration and allows me to get my system setup before I decide to go a much more expensive route of registration, shipping in state and such. If your in utah can you find a list of species and sources in Utah here...