• Interest in aquaponics
• Pen and paper
• Laptop
• Water bottle
• Comfortable shoes as we walk around on the farm
• Do bring work / old clothes, and or overalls as it is practical work and you get really dusty and dirty doing the grinding, drilling etc.

Topics Covered

• What is Aquaponics
• Types of systems
• Fish Husbandry
• Plant Health management
• Aquaculture design
• Home system build
• Tank Aeration Designs
• Parallel Air Pump System
• Water Pump Manifold System
• Dosage Systems
• Media Bed Designs
• DWC Bed Design
• Morning system check
• Practical Work
  • Seedlings
  • Transplanting
  • Mineralisation
  • Spraying

• Morning system checks
• Commercial system design
• Understanding the design flow
• Daily tunnel activities
• Financial planning
• Evaluate CAPEX models for starting your own system
• Understanding your market, marketing strategy and sales strategy
• Conduct a Aquaculture and Hydroponics Financial Planning
• Configure and build a monthly and quarterly budget
• Configure a Profit and Loss statement  for a 24 month period
• Configure a Balance Sheet for the system
• Conduct a Capital Budgeting evaluation for project
• Evaluate strategies to improve commercial viability
• Mineralisation Systems (Anaerobic and Aerobic)
• Environmental control systems and related tunnel designs
• Morning system checks
• Advanced aquaculture
• Economics of aquaponics
• Aquaculture regulations and grants
• Fish breeding
• How to harvest fish and management its cold chain
• How to collect and transport fish
• How to minimize stress to the fish when introducing the fingerlings into your system
• How to manage the fish quarantine area i.e. water changes
• How to treat unhealthy fish in your Aquaponic system and quarantine area
• Understand the most common issues experienced with fish
• Introduction to hydroponics and design
• Plant nutrition
• Pest control
  • Understand the Standard and Reactive Spray Plans, and best times for spraying
  • Scouting, night time inspections, and pest cards and “focussed spraying”
  • Understand correct spraying procedure and spraying effectiveness
  • Training on responsible use of crop protection products: how to store and dispense chemicals and dispensing, and health and safety measures

• Seed to harvest
• Develop/Review the Tunnel harvesting Plan
• Understand how to manage for continuous harvesting
• Understand how to prepare for the harvest
• How to manage harvest product quality and QAS documents
• Understand the harvesting transaction process
• Understand “Corrective Action” Report Feedback
• Lastly, conduct and communicate Post Harvesting preparation and audits.
• Product distribution
• Marketing
• Trouble shooting
• Operational management – The Farm Business Structures and Performance Model
• Aquafeed
• Business case development
• Regulatory, cold chain