Aquaponics

Aquaponics explained

Aquaponics is the most efficient and cost effective way of producing food, known to man.  And it’s Organic!

Fish feed the plants, eliminating the need to buy plant food.  The plants purify the water for the fish, giving you two crop products, instead of one, from the same amount of space.

The only thing which needs to be added is Fish food.  So long as the fish food is organic and you don’t use any other chemicals, then your whole venture will be completely organic, producing much higher yields than any conventional farming system, be it organic or not & giving you a very competitive edge, should you decide to turn it into  a business.

Aquaponics is quite simply a marriage between Aquaculture (fresh water fish; raising and breeding) and Hydroponics (soil free plant production).  It is a far more efficient system, than both of its ‘highly efficient’ parent industries.

Fish and ponds

Fish or some other (preferably edible) fresh water creatures, sit (usually) directly bellow in a pond or tank of water.

The tank/pond water builds up with ammonia and other chemicals, from fish urine and excrement.  Left to its own devices this water would eventually become stagnant and the fish would suffer, but the water is sucked up from one end, by small pumps, which transport the water on the beginning of its journey around the aquaponic system.

Gravel 

The water is first pumped into the bottom of a container, holding gravel.  This filters out big lumps of fish dodo, so that it doesn’t mess up the system further down.  But its main purpose is to assist the whole procedure in a micro-biological way;

In nature there is the nitrogen cycle.  Our atmosphere consists mostly of this inert element.  Our planet has a nitrogen based atmosphere.  Plants need Nitrogen to grow and produce the green pigment chlorophyll, found in the chloroplasts of the cells in the leaves and it makes them go green.

The Nitrogen cycle is recreated in miniature, in the aquaponic set-up.  In nature nitrogen fixing bacteria live in river banks and on gravel, so having the gravel causes these bacteria to become present.  Adding a small quantity of river gravel would probably help to get them there, to begin with, though that is not necessary and will arrive naturally.

The nitrogen fixing bacteria transform the ammonia from the fish urine into usable nitrates, which can be utilised, by the plants in the next stage of the circulatory aquaponic system.

The Plants

Water overflows in a constant gradual flow, out of the gravel holding container and into trays, positioned above the tanks or ponds and fixed at a slight angle, with the water entering it at the slightly higher end.

This water, enriched with nitrogen, then trickles constantly through the roots of the plants, giving the plants the entire range of nutrient they need.

At the ends of the trays, the water, now emptied of nutrients and purified; falls as an artificial waterfall, back into the other end of the pond/tank from whence it came, forming a complete cycle.