How to do Aquaponics the Easy Way

You can use aquaponics to raise food for you and your family or for profit or both.

Aquaponics can be used to grow both vegetables and fish in a organic and sustainable way that requires little space and effort once set up. Vegetables, fruits and herbs are grown in less space as in hydroponics (without all the chemicals required in hydroponics) and fish are raised as in aquaculture, without the need for all of the fancy filtration as the plants filter the water for you.

Aquaponics is a form of sustainable agriculture that blends aquaculture with hydroponics and is beneficial to both the plants and the fish. The waste from the fish is used by the plants as fertilizer, thus cleaning the water for the fish. Clean water from the plants is returned to the fish and the cycle begins again.

Once set up a aquaponics system uses very few resources and requires little maintenance. Aquaponics uses a symbiotic relationship with bacteria to break down the fish wastes to nitrates which fertilize the plants. Ammonia from the fish waste is broken down by bacteria to nitrites. The nitrites are further broken down by yet another bacteria to nitrates which is used by the plants as fertilizer. When a aquaponics system is properly designed these symbiotic processes happen automatically as they do in nature.

Types of aquaponics systems include:

• Ebb and flow aquaponics system also called flood and drain .aquaponics system.
• Deep water culture, also called raft aquaponics system.
• Nutrient film, also called NTF hydroponic/aquaponics system.