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Archive for the ‘Aquaponics’ Category

aquaponics is the attempt to create a intertwined biosphere of plant and animal life (primarily fish) that benefits the growth of both. More often than not these systems are used to grow food, however that is not always the case.

I have been researching these systems, looking for the best designs, and noting the pitfalls, so that in the near future, I may have the understanding to build my own system.

In all my digging for the nuggets of knowledge regarding this fairly obscure topic, these are the 5 most useful blogs I have found.

1. Backyard Aquaponics – The premiere information portal for the would be Aquaponaut. This site is the home of the Backyards Aquaponics magazine and has more information in it’s forums than pretty much the rest of the Internet combined. It is a fantastic resource and should not be missed by anyone seriously considering their own system.
2. Snow Camp Aquaponics – This wonderful little blog documents the trials and tribulations of Brian Naess in his quest to develop an aquaponics system on a shoestring budget. He posts only about once a month, but his perseverance through every disaster and his dedication to just making it work gives me hope for my future system and should inspire any would-be aquaponaut.
3. Aquaponics Made Easy – Murray Hallam runs a business that creates a wide variety of products for use in Aquaponics including grow beds and tanks. His blog is full of useful videos, tips, tricks, advice, system designs and installations. This site is a treasure trove of information, and a great resource for buying material if you happen to live in Australia. The videos alone make it a must see.
4. A Thought Adrift – Simon Gemmell was so successful with his own aquaponics system that he launched Capital Aquaponics as a business to design and develop systems for others. His photos give you an idea of the incredible potential of these systems. The growth of both plants and trout is impressive and shows everyone what they should strive for their system to be.
5. Backyard Aquaponics Forum – Yes this is basically just the forum from the first site mentioned, and no it is not a blog. Regardless, it is so important as a resource that it must be given more real estate on this post. The forums are very active with people designing and building their own systems. Some of the larger ones are commercial in scale, and f it were not for the pictures I wouldn’t believe them. I regularly lurk the forums, just trying to gain as much info, from the community, that my brain can absorb.

So there you have it, my top 5 aquaponics Blogs. If anyone has any more suggestions I’d love to hear them. Cheers!

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A nice little introductory video about aquaponics by the great people at Good magazine. They do a decent job of describing the basics of an Aquaponics system. They actually show several systems in the video, an interesting one is based around aquarium fish tanks. However they use a solids filter and a seperate bio-filterboth of which are unnecessary and are actually diverting nutrients from the plant beds.

aquaponics is the process of growing food that combines the pros of aquaculture (raising fish in tanks) and hydroponics (growing plants without soil) while eliminating the cons.

Aquaponics is a sustainable food production system:

• Aquaponics has very low water consumption: less than 1% of the water used in traditional farming.
• Aquaponics uses 70% less energy than traditional in-ground farming methods!
• Aquaponics creates eight to ten times more vegetable production than farming in-ground.
• Aquaponics is fully scalable: backyard family systems to full commercial systems.
• Aquaponics is pure, clean, and natural: USDA Certified Organic.
• Aquaponics is easy to learn and operate: anyone can do it!

Aquaponics has been around for a long time, but recently more and more home owners have started to develop home based systems. In part this is due to people wanting to take control of their food security. Additionally in todays wired world the internet is allowing more people to access better information.

There are quite a few good resources online. My particular favorite is: Backyard Aquaponics because of their large community of experienced Aquaponicists. Most started by developing small “learning” systems and have graduated on to larger systems that can keep their family stocked with fresh fish and veggies. In some cases they have developed large commercial scale operations that produce food for sale. You can track their progress through the forums, see detailed designs and most importantly get valuable insight and advice from people who have “been there and done that”.

I will soon begin my own “learning system”. based on my climate, growing season and land availability I have a few tough choices to make. Which type or types of fish to grow? What grow media should I use? Technical details such as valves, pumps general design and layout. Thankfully great resources exist to help me find the answers to these and many more questions.

Aquaponics has the potential to feed a whole lot of people with energy-efficient, sustainable food-production methods. A lot of this will be done by individuals and families with backyard aquaponics systems. As these systems become more economical and efficient, backyard systems will become more common until every neighborhood has one. This will put tremendous power back into the hands of individuals, as they become more and more responsible for their own food security and head toward “food freedom”.