What is Aquaponics?
Aquaponics combines Aquaculture (fish farming) with Hydroponics (growing plants without soil). It’s a sustainable system that efficiently produces fresh vegetables and fish. In short: the fish poop to feed the plants, and the plants clean the water for the fish. In the end, you get delicious and nutritious produce, AND fish to eat! Win win!
Of course, it’s a little more complicated than that…but the good news is, bacteria (and sometimes worms) does most of the work! When the fish poop, naturally occurring bacteria in the system turn the fish waste into fertilizer through nitrification.
Benefits of Aquaponics:
The benefits of aquaponics are myriad. For the backyard gardener, it provides a simple and effective method of gardening year round. It also produces fish for use in home cooking. It can be accomplished in a small greenhouse or even indoors in the garage or a spare bedroom.
Large scale aquaponics is much more sustainable than large scale farming. While you are limited in the potential crops, what you CAN grow is nutritious, delicious, and prolific.
It Saves Water
Aquaponics only uses about 5% of the water that is used by traditional farming methods. Since the water is continuously recycled very little of the water is wasted.
It Saves Energy
Without the need for large scale farming equipment and the potential for alternative energy inputs, aquaponics uses on average 1/3 the energy of traditional farming methods. With backyard systems, the energy requirements could be as low as running a simple aquarium pump.
It’s “Organic”
Organic is in quotes for a reason. Being official labeled organic can be expensive. However, aquaponics is organic by default since pesticides and fertilizers are potentially lethal to our fish!
Aquaponics Systems:
While there are many potential aquaponic configurations we recommend two options. Media Bed and Deep Water Culture
Media Grow Bed
The media bed technique is particularly suited to indoor or back yard aquaponics. There are various configurations for this method but the most simple consists of 4 components.
- Grow Bed
- Grow Media
- Clay Balls
- Pea gravel (without minerals or limestone)
- Red wiggler worms can also aid in breaking down roots that get left behind when plants are replaced
- Fish Tank
- Fish
- Tilapia
- Gold Fish
- Carp
- Trout
- etc.
- Pump
Deep Water Culture
The deep water culture method is great for larger backyard aquaponics systems and commercial systems. We use deep water culture at Hollar Farms because we have the space and it allows us to produce the amount of vegetables we need to service our clients.
The capacity that can be gained with deep water culture may be offset by the extra equipment needed to make the system work.
Since there is no grow media in which to plant the plants they are grown in Styrofoam rafts suspended over deep water troughs. Also absent because of no grow media is a way to break down the solids so a separate system for filtering solids is required when using this system.
For these reasons a deep water culture system can be difficult as a home system unless you’re willing to devote a lot of space and resources.