What is Aquaponics?
To define what aquaponics is, we need to understand the word itself. Aquaponics is a product of two words: aquaculture and hydroponics. Aquaculture, we know, has to do with the rearing or cultivation of fish. Top put it plainly, aquaculture is fish farming. On the other hand, hydroponics is the cultivation of plants, or crops, in water.
Aquaponics, therefore, is the growing of fish and plants in the same place, an environment deliberately developed to mutually benefit both the fish and the plants. In layman’s explanation, the fish benefit from the plants and the plants, in turn, benefit from the fish.
How it works
The system of aquaponics is not a new phenomenon. It has been practiced for ages, with historical connections to the Chinese and the Aztecs. It is a method of farming that has now been modernized, or improved to produce food in a very efficient and environmentally-friendly way.
This system of aquaculture is cost-effective in running it. It is designed to automatically re-circulate resources so that there is not much need for one to monitor it. The fish or other aquatic animals being farmed in this system will release their waste within the water, of course. The waste produced by these fish becomes the nutrients that fertilize the plants that are hydroponically grown in this water. In the same process, the plants in turn purify the same water for the fish to benefit. The cycle goes on as the fish and the plants grown and, in the case of the fish, they multiply.
The cost-effectiveness in this process is achieved by the mere fact that, done separately, both aquaculture and hydroponics are very expensive methods of farming. For instance, nutrients required to feed the vegetables in hydroponics can be very expensive. There is also the need for the flushing of the systems at certain but regular periods. This would in turn prove to be cumbersome when it comes disposing of this waste water.
In the same way, in aquaculture there is the need to closely monitor the water and check for excess waste. In most cases, you would need to remove some water, quite regularly on a daily basis, and then replaced with clean fresh water.
These methods are very good and yield good results when done separately, as in aquaculture and hydroponics, but can be expensive and very demanding in terms of monitoring. Aquaponics comes in handy to eliminate these two costs of what are otherwise expensive farming processes when done separately.
Therefore, it is best to combine the two into what is then known as aquaponics. The plants clean or purify the water for the fish while the fish fertilize the water for the plants to grow well in.
Types of plants and fish
There are many types of plants and fish that can be grown in an aquaponics system. However, certain types are clearly identified as the best crop for this type of farming. Many aquaponics specialists recommend such plants as eggplants, cucumber, tomatoes, melons, basil and various herbs. It is also not surprising that an aquaponics system is also good for many Asian vegetables.
Depending on the size of the project, an aquaponics system can be built either on small-scale or large scale basis. In spite of the size of an aquaponics system, the fact remains that it is a cost effective way of farming fish and vegetables at the same time. It is agreed that in aquaponics system, plants use only one-tenth of the water they would use in traditional agriculture.
