Intro to Aquaponics

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AdastraJunction
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Intro to Aquaponics

Post by AdastraJunction »

Levitating Cat asked if I would start an Aquaponics thread in the hopes of education others on my experiences with doing cheap, sustainable year round gardening. So here is your first lesson.

Aquaponics ... it sounds like something from Star Trek. In Star Trek Voyager, Kes sets up a very prolific hydroponic garden on the starship when the replicators stop working and food supplies dwindled. Actually, the stuff on Star Trek is hydroponics – growing plants without soil, in nutrient-rich fluid. It isn't fiction, NASA uses both hydroponics and aquaponics, calling them ‘Farming For The Future’. Disney World also does both in their “Living with the Land” Exhibit at Epcot which produces most of the Parks fish, fruits and vegetable supply for the entire park!

Although it sounds very 21-century, it isn’t a new technology. The first experiments with growing plants without soil actually took place back in the 1600s. Yes, that's right - the sixteen hundreds!

The problem with hydroponics is that it needs a lot of human intervention, and a lot of chemicals. Bottles and bottles of chemicals to make nutrient rich water to grow the plants in.

Aquaponics is different – it uses a combination of hydroponics and aquaculture (fish farming). The fish and plants work symbiotically – each feed the other. It’s a self-contained ecosystem that requires little human intervention (we don’t need to fiddle with it!). So we don’t need to add nutrients to the plants, the fish do that. We don’t need to add chemicals to control the water quality, the plants do that.

The plants act like a reed bed, filtering and purifying the water.The result is happy fish, happy plants and very happy humans. A happy planet, too, as there is no waste (the plants need the waste products from the fish, they make them grow) and very little environmental impact. Aquaculture does have environmental impact, because the fish
waste is a problem.

Growing plants aquaponically uses 90% less water than growing them in soil, so it is ideal for areas of drought and water supply problems. It is organic – it has to be, you can’t use pesticides on the plants in an aquaponics system as it would kill the fish. It is possible for people to garden aquaponically who can’t garden traditionally, due to the lack of need for digging, weeding, bending, and risks associated with using pesticides.

When people first get interested in aquaponics they often start with an Internet search and can get disheartened. It is easy to be baffled by all the information out there, there is such a lot of it, much of it confusing, contradictory and overly technical. The dream of setting up your own system can seem very far off. People can be scared by the electrical components of aquaponics – after all, water and electricity aren’t supposed to mix. You need a pump to get the water from the fish tank to the growbed. When I first looked into getting an aquaponic system, this did frighten me. I soon found out, though, that the electrical parts are actually really simple and all enclosed and water-tight. They are designed to live in water and the parts that plug into the mains electricity don't go near the water.

Once you get your own system you realize it’s a little like using a computer. You don’t have to fully understand a computer to use it; neither do you have to fully understand about pumps, siphons and drains to use an aquaponics system. I love the fact that I have a source of healthy, organic plants growing whenever I need them, all year round. It is also great to know that I am doing my bit to reduce food miles and saving some money at the same time.

I’d love to see more people take up the hobby. It is a way to get fresh, healthy produce if you are concerned about fears of genetic modification and manipulation by food producers.

Let’s look at an aquaponics system as being like the hardware and software of a computer system:

On a computer the hardware is the monitor, tower, keyboard, mouse, etc. The software is the stuff that makes it work, that makes each component communicate and lets you get information in and out of the system.

In an aquaponics system the hardware parts are the fish tank, the growbed, the electrical bits (pump, hoses and drain) and the growbed medium (e.g. clay pebbles). The software, the stuff that makes the whole thing work, are the fish and the plants.

The best part is this ... everything is plug & play! I'm OK with computers, I don't fully understand how they work, but I can make them do the things I need to. It is exactly the same with my aquaponic system. If you are going to use a ready-made system, all you have to do is put the tanks in place (systems often come with a stand so the growbed sits above the fish tank), put the pump in the fish tank and thread the hose up into the growbed, then slot the drain on. Hands-on courses are great for giving you the confidence to try this yourself.

You could create your own DIY system if you are good at making things. Many systems use a principle of flood & drain, which is easy to understand. The water is pumped up onto the growbed and when it reaches a certain level the drain (which sits in a hole in the bottom of the growbed) is triggered, which releases the water back down into the fish tank.

An investment of small amount of money will reward you many, many times over with herbs, vegetables, fruits and fish. If you want to, you can choose edible fish. If you don’t, you can have them as pets. What you don’t have is a horrid chore each week of cleaning out that tank, as you would with an aquarium. With aquaponics, it’s hands-off as much as possible. Cleaning the tank would mess up the ecosystem. You want the beneficial bacteria that grow in there because they break down the fish waste into usable nutrients for the plants. I don’t claim to be an aquaponics expert (you don’t need to be to have a healthy aquaponics system).

I will get into Maintenance, Planting mediums, Types of fish, Types of plants to grow in another thread.
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Kassandra
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Re: Intro to Aquaponics

Post by Kassandra »

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This is interesting. Hydroponic shops are around every street corner out here in the area of CA where I live. But, This is the first time I've heard of "aquaponics." Thanks for sharing this info, and making the distinctions between the two.



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Shub Niggurath
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Re: Intro to Aquaponics

Post by Shub Niggurath »

Thanks for starting this thread. After reading everything I did a little bit of research to find out what's the cost of the components in my country and where to buy it. Turns out the idea of aquaponics is still crawling here and barely anyone knows about it which makes it expensive as hell and not easily available.
The idea itself is fantastic and I'm definitely going to get into it once me and my partner move out of this huge ass city where we don't even have enough space for a satisfactory amount of pot plants, not even thinking about an aquaponic installation.
Whoever invented this stuff is a genius and I'm heavily surprised that it's not popular here in central Europe where the climate prevents us from year-round gardening. I bet all the Eco Village communities could benefit from aquaponics a lot.
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Re: Intro to Aquaponics

Post by Echo_of_shadows »

Thanks for sharing this. I done a bit of research into this myself since I read that they're trying to get a group started to do this in my home town. I think it's a nice idea, as is any sort of plant growing. I think what fascinates me most about growing plants is my utter inability to do it myself. I'm a plant killer. :anxious: I've convinced myself that the only reason the plant in the kitchen is still alive is because it was my mom that brought it inside to take care of. :P If I could find some herbs that would grow well in mostly water, like my kitchen plant, I'd be happy to grow them alongside of my little beta fish. :)
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