Meat Rabbits in Aust.

Joji, my longer term plans include setting up a small farm that is as self sufficient as possible. Accordingly rabbits looked very attractive, particularly with the US successes. They don't like the heat, a problem if you're going to keep them in cages and when we looked at the impact of and how easily it's caught of disease we have in this country, at least for myself the sums didn't win out. Too much risk at loosing a whole colony even with insect protection and immunization is possible but costly. From what you might gather of the mindsets here, I'd also be looking for post SHTF sustainability, to which immunization isn't and keeping rabbits cool is tricky [you can keep them in underground burrows I suppose]. I came to the conclusion that chooks are the better option considering climate, feed cost and output.  Do your own research of course, your circumstances will be yours.

This is my goal also. I have the chickens but rabbits are nearly as much work unless you have a large free range setup and don't give me eggs also.  Plus from what I read rabbits have great protein levels but not sufficient fat so would be best as supplementary to other live stock.
alos you can begin keeping chickens in any place that has even a tiny yard so learn now while there is no pressure.
also pigeons would be good as they come in several meat bird varieties and in theory forage for them selves mainly. They breed like rabbits and don't get callisi or myxo. Although there is the bird flu to be considered.

sorry a bit off meat rabbits 

Having done research into aquaponics as well, I have found that Bass would be the best fish to use and to try to farm mealworms for feed for them.

Bass seem to be fairly resistant to temperature differences and are apparently omnivorous. I am also looking at the idea of using feed wuality grain as food for them as well.

Just got to check with state and local regulations about keeping rabbits. A lot of places they are banned as pets and classed as pest animals

Seeing this thread has been bumped (which is a good thing), I wonder if agitation of the water's surface would provide adequate oxygen. Perhaps if a windmill could be geared to drive a watermill-style propeller type device to agitate the surface this would help the fish survive. Think of a steamboat's propeller; this would surely add air to the water.

There's plenty of ways to add the Oxygen one of them as described and it's not about getting the oxygen, rather it's about how much oxygen can dissolve in the water compared to the number of fish in hot water temperatures. You put a lot of fish in a small space for higher production and it's fine if you have your air pumps but when it's hot, the ability for the water to take on O2 is lower than the need for the number of fish you have. So fish die off until the number of fish matches the oxygen levels in it. A solution is to cool the water, which takes an enormous amount of energy or as some breeders do, you pump pure O2 directly into the water and being a higher concentration than the air [air is 1/3 oxygen] it boosts the water oxygen for a short time. Trout are rather susceptible to low oxygen unlike many other breeds, though they are the best fish for Vic otherwise and yet half the speed of growth of silver perch [which are great up north].

To me it's one of a number of issues with Aquaponics, and I want to stress that my research centers around what works here in Vic, which would be similar for states in the south, though may be different depending on availability of fish and temperature. Perhaps the biggest issue is the need for the fish-food which is made from fish and most fish need the oils in the fish and is not cheap and not sustainable. You can supplement it a 'little' depending on the breed, and depending on where you live, black solider fly [no good down south as they die out during winter] and insect traps, though again the need for oils is a problem I ran into. This may not be the case for Talapia, I am unsure.

The useful fish are the quick growing breeds and the available ones are carnivores down south. Talapia [which might be available in WA btw] are herbivores [well technically omnivores] so they can even be fed on food scrap, though of course would need a variety in their diet. Again, I've not researched them fully as you can't get them legally here in Vic [noxious animal] though they self breed , quick to grow, eat almost anything, very tolerant of conditions. If they were available where you are, I would pay a good deal of attention on the ability to feed them, is it possible to do sustainably [look at food production versus food needs of the fish] and I would imagine that would be via a variety of means.

I also found that an aquaponics system was particularly complicated in that it needed a variety of systems working well at the same time with fairly tight tolerances for decent production, the necessity of good amounts of power, to which I did a great deal of research trying to find solutions for. The sacrifice here of power for food production versus other usage. I did make some headway there with low lift pumps that used minimal power.

I ended up passing on it for the problems that weren't really surmountable with my location and available fish and found the simple no-pump hydroponics to be superior in food production [it has it's own problems that I'm currently ironing out], almost as good as pumped hydroponics, very low input, the possibility of capturing most of the nutrients and recycling them back into the system as you can use any liquefied fertilizer. I'm not certain that it's suitable for root crops, though I have contemplated sand as a medium, though growing spuds etc is easy and I think it's probably not worth the effort and you might as well do them in the ground/raised bed/wicking etc.

Chickens, to my mind look promising with a good protein compliment with egg production, people have kept them without feed and whilst I'm not particularly familiar with them, I would imagine that feeding them with trapped insects/black soilder fly/worms/food scraps and chicken friendly pasture would probably do the trick. I have only rudimentary knowledge here.

Rabbits concern me due to disease, otherwise they are fantastic as a means of protein, and I very much refer to Token our resident expert on the topic.

I haven't really had issues with NPK at all. Though I've only done small scale experiments at this point. Only problem I've had with the Kratky method [no pump hydroponics] is getting the water level right and something [snails I think] eating all of my young lettuce, though that's another issue really. Rain keeps screwing with my experiments and over filling [and retarding growth with the flooded root ball] as I've had wide tubs that collect the water. I've got another plan to use downpipe which ought to reduce the water collection, just haven't got around to it as I have too many projects going on currently.

Yeah I knew about your wabbit deaths, which is what turned me off them, the cost per vaccination isn't worth it and the death rate is rather high and as you have said, it doesn't protect them any longer anyhow. Some minor issues for summer and heat. They have a good food to meat ratio, assuming you don't lose them. I know they breed up quick again, they're crazily prolific which makes them great for food production but the risk versus reward doesn't look like it pans out?

Chickens on the other hand give a great return [eggs and meat] for little maintenance and can be used as tractors to make soil barren with no effort.

I'm a little skeptical on it not been tested about crossover, though if that's indeed the case, it could be far worse, it could cross over to humans. In terms of what to do about the bunnies, we could just eat them again, Australians already eat lots of chicken, not a massive difference.