Duckweed aka water lense aka Lemnoideae aka bayroot

I have the opportunity to acquire some fish but before I do that I need to be able to feed them. I could go buy feed but that puts me in a position of being dependent on a store.  I'm not a dooms day prep guy but I do like the freedom of not needing to go buy all the time when I can get what I need elsewhere for free.

Duckweed is a great food for fish and can be used as a primary food source with some fish and animals although it's good to have other things in their diet also. (in the future I may evaluate it as a bird feed.) 

Step one was to acquire some small ponds that I could use for food production. I got two kiddie pools for that. One was taken from the trash down the street and the other was found on the side of I95. It had apparently blown out of someones truck apparently.

If you want to buy ponds like this they typically run around 10 bucks each. '

Step 2. I placed them on boards that we had laying around. It's particle board which isn't ideal but it's what I had on hand. The reason for this is so that I can easily mow/weedwack around the ponds without damaging them. It also saves me the bother of hand weeding around the ponds. I placed the ponds in full sun and put some grass cuttings in one of them while leaving the other without. This is the beginning of many such experiments to optimize production. 

Step 3. Then I acquired some duckweed from a local ditch. To harvest it I used a 5 gallon bucket with holes drilled in it so that it acts a bit like a net. A net would be ideal but I didn't have one on hand.

Some info on duckweed: The plant may not have a root depending on the species.  Reproduction is mostly by asexual budding which occurs from a meristem... so similar to cloning in that it has the same make up as the mother plant. The flower is the smallest known measuring roughly .3 mm and the seed is produced in a sac that has air so it floats.  

Duckweed reduces or prevents algae growth and greatly reduces evaporation. It's use extends beyond food. It could be used for bio fuel among other things. 

http://www.mobot.org/jwcross/duckweed/Fish.htm#Nutritional%20Value has some good info on duckweed as a food source.

I plan to throw some minnows in each pond as a means of preventing mosquito larva from surviving to maturity. 

I estimate that I should be able to harvest half the pond roughly every three days. The harvested duckweed will either be dried for storage or frozen in ice cube trays so I can just toss little blocks of it into the fish pond. 

By the time I get the fish I should have plenty of food in storage for them. 

Edit - So it's been a few weeks and my observations have been that while duckweed does slow algae growth it doesn't prevent it enough to thrive. My initial estimations of production were off but I have a few ideas to correct this. When I have the learning curve worked out I will update with my findings if possible. 

Word of wisdom for the day - 

use whats around you. You don't have to buy to survive.

video of the day

This video is a beautiful expression of loving your neighbor as your self.