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Aquaponics combines fish and hydroponics

My aquaponic system is still a work in progress

Aquaponics is a relatively new field and there is a great need for more information. It involves the development of mini-ecosystems where fish and other animals help support and are supported by a range of plants. For me, aquaponics is the most fascinating aspect of producing food from the garden and much of the information here has come from my personal experience.

Also you will see that the information here is a bit different from what you might find on other websites. As I have been "learning on the job", you will find my systems less like the professionally crafted ones on other sites. Here is a good site about backyard aquaponics that has some good information and will show you what I mean. Unlike the carefully designed systems on this site, mine has evolved a piece at a time, often using everyday household items.

I will go through everything here (even my mistakes and stuff-ups), but from the image below you can see it still looks like a bit of a mess. Nevertheless, it works - although it is still very much a work in progress.

My aim has been to develop a system that could be put together on a budget and required only a single air pump as its energy input. In other words, it should had to be one that could be maintained on a budget and without having to become a hydrological techno-geek.

To achieve this, I decided on a strictly ecological approach. You might think I have lost the plot by saying this, after all I have already said that aquaponic systems are like mini-ecosystem. However, I wanted to go a step or two further - no chemical inputs, no regular volume changes and no complex mechanical filtration and water purification equipment.

This means that everything needed to maintain water quality had to be achieved within the system - not by technological inputs. To say that I had set myself a tall order would be quite an understatement and many was the time I thought it may prove impossible.

The size of the system was the first thing against me since small scale aquaculture has problems that larger systems do not. In short, the smaller the total volume of any ecosystem, the less likely it will be self-sustainable. However, I found a number of factors were essential and my one air pump objective fell short when I needed to add a small UV clarifier, but more of that in a minute.

As the term suggests, Aquaponics is a system of two halves - aquaculture and hydroponics (of a sort), but a proper understanding of this subject must begin with aquaculture. So exactly what is Aquaculture?

Developing Small-scale Systems

Of course the main objective for the systems we are developing is water quality. Without an effective means of maintaining water quality, nothing will work at all.

This is where plant growth comes into the picture. The basic premise of an aquaponic system is that it should utilize the waste nutrients from fish to support plant growth. So the converse - that plant growth should help maintain water quality - should also be true.

Last, but not least, we need to design and build the system. So what equipment do we need and how can we do it as inexpensively as possible?

One thing is fairly clear from my efforts to date and that is that the system requirements for Holding fish are very different to those for Growing fish. The significantly higher inputs needed to support growth quickly overwhelm my small system.

Although I will soon be going back to buying fish of the required size and using the system to hold and 'purge' them, a significantly enlarged bio-filter capacity is certainly warranted. This is one of the major thing I will be looking at in the next stage of my aquaponics system development. If you click here you can read more about this and my other Food Garden research projects.

Although the objective here is for a 'budget' system, the development of such systems requires a lot of experimentation - to say nothing of good, old-fashioned trial-and-error. By doing this and reporting our findings here, we can save you a considerable amount of time, expense and frustration. If you are interested in Aquaponics and would like to be among the first in the World to benefit from our research projects, there are two things you can do.

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Aquaponics combines fish and hydroponics

Developing Small-scale Systems

Further Reading and Useful Links