Some of the most common questions we are asked about aquaponics are "How cost effective is it?" and "How long will it take to pay off a system?"

Personally we have always felt that aquaponics pays for itself very quickly, but an independent review is far more useful to people rather than our own calculations.

Recently we were approached by a gentleman by the name of Richard Chiang. He was working with Mr John Brummell from Canberra in helping him to promote the use of aquaponics around the Canberra region. Richard wanted to analyse the cost benefits of aquaponics as he felt that there was very little information of aquaponics costings available for small domestic aquaponic systems, so he set about researching. After attending one of our workshops a few months ago, Richard went away and studied more about aquaponics, asked many questions, and wrote the following paper titled "Cost Benefit Analysis of Aquaponic Systems".

The paper is based around some of the more popular Backyard Aquaponics systems and the "pay off period" for fully supplied and installed systems.

http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/Travi ... ystems.pdf

Richard is a retired public servant who has worked for more than 30 years with the Malaysian and Western Australian Government, and holds the following qualifications:

Bachelor of Surveying (Honours), University of Queensland
Postgraduate Diploma in Computer Science, University of Queensland
Postgraduate Diploma in Applied Finance & Investment, Securities Institute of Australia
Certificate in Financials Advising Essentials, Securities Institute of Australia