Hydroponics can be a great way to grow plants, but it can have its disadvantages. Maintaining consistent nutrient levels in the water can be a bit difficult for the average gardener. And for the organic gardener, supplying organic nutrients that are truly organic, just makes it that much more difficult. Aquaponics is a way to build a hydroponics system that is fully organic, and where the system takes care of nutrient levels itself.
Aquaponics is a blend of hydroponics and aquaculture. It just happens that the fish wastes created in aquaculture systems are full of organic plant nutrients. One of the big problems created by aquaculture is to somehow dispose of this nutrient rich fish water that eventually becomes toxic to the fish. One day someone go the brilliant idea to run it through an hydroponics system to let the plants utilize and filter these materials out of the water.
This creates a biological cycle between plants, fish and bacteria that clean up the fish wastes and convert them into plant nutrients. With this kind of system, you don't have to constantly monitor nutrient levels or flush the system to remove excess chemicals.
The plant roots filtering abilities eliminates any need for a mechanical filter for the fish, and the need to add fertilizer for the plants.
With aquaponics, the same water can be used over and over again, because the plants are that good at filtering the water. Because of this, aquaponics uses only about 2% of the water used in soil farming.
In a mature system, you typically don't have the swings in nutrient levels that you do with hydroponics. With aquaponics, if your plants are showing long term signs of lacking nutrients, that can often be solved by adding more fish. If nutrient levels are having a tendency to run too high, you can either harvest more fish, or add another grow bed and more plants to the system. This system is truly organic and it is shown in the quality of the food produced.
With aquaponics, you have the ability to produce better quality plants with less work, plus you produce fish too, all with the same resources. Farm raised fish are increasing in demand, especially domestic produced fish that are known to be from a clean source. There are many opportunities for fish including food, breeding fish for aquariums, other aquaponics growers and for stocking ponds.
If you are interesting in building a hydroponics system, or already have one, try adding a fish tank to it. You will likely see better quality plants and vegetables, and eliminate the hassles of adding fertilizer and constantly monitoring the chemical levels. Plus you will be able to produce clean, fresh, organically grown fish.
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