What is Aquaponics?

Basil growing in a home DIY aquaponics system built on top of a standard 40-gallon fish tank.

What is an Aquaponics System?

Aquaponics is what you get when you combine a hydroponic system with raising fish. But why combine the two and how does it work? To answer that questions let’s take a step back to examine the input and outputs of each component technique.

Aquaculture = Fish Farming

Aquaculture is a fancy word for fish farming and typically involves large tanks or open-water enclosures stocked with suitable fish species. Commercially, the fish are fed a steady diet until they’re large enough to harvest, though, technically a goldfish is a bowl is a form of aquaculture.

Anyone’s who has kept fish knows that there’s some work involved. In particular, the fish need regular feeding, and the tank needs periodic cleaning as water quality gradually decreases, and slimy green algae begin to form on the sides of the tank. Here’s a simplified breakdown of keeping fish:

Needs – Work Involved in Keeping Fish

1. Regular Feeding
2. Cleaning water and tank

Yields – What You Get Out of Keeping Fish 

1. Marketable Fish or Fish to Enjoy
2. Fish waste (aka poop)

Hydroponics = Growing Plants Without Soil

Hydroponics involves growing plants without soil by rooting plants in a soilless medium such as horticultural clay pebbles in a growing bed that’s periodically flooded with nutrient rich water.

Hydroponic systems are broadly broken into a few basic types; Flood and Drain and Floating Raft. In a Food and drain system, grow beds are cycled between periods of wet and dry – the combination of the two ensures a healthy mixture of water, nutrients, and oxygen are reaching the roots of each plant. In contrast, the roots of plants grown in floating raft systems are always submerged. The addition of aeration stones helps bring oxygen to the roots of each plant. In either case, hydroponics has the following needs and yields:

Needs – Maintaining a Hydroponic System Requires:

1. Suitable Plants
2. Liquid Nutrient Additives

Yields – Outputs from a Hydroponic System Are:

1. Plants/Food
2. Nutrient deficient water

Aquaponics = Combining Aquaculture and Hydroponics

The genius of aquaponics is that it combines the strengths of each system is a way that cancels out their weaknesses. While one system requires clean (nutrient poor) water but produces dirty (nutrient rich) water the other system does the opposite – combining the two results in a single system capable of producing and using its waste.

Needs – Maintaining An Aquaponics System

1. Regular Feeding
2. Cleaning water and tank
3. Suitable Plants
4. Liquid Nutrient Additives 

Yields – Outputs From An Aquaponics Systems

1. Marketable Fish or Fish to Enjoy
2. Fish waste (aka poop)
3. Plants/Food
4. Nutrient deficient water

Aquaponics is The Best of Both Worlds

By combining aquaculture and aquaponics, you can eliminate a lot of the work necessary when maintaining them independently. It’s smart design that anyone can implement – even at home on a standard fish tank!

In this next post, I demonstrate how to turn a standard fish tank into a simple, DIY home aquaponics system using readily available off the shelf parts.