Aquaponic
came from words Aquaculture and Hydroponics. The meaning of
this words is that plants and fishes grow together in one integrated
system. It is become symbiotic mutualism for both of them.
Aquaculture and hydroponic both have same down ends.
Hydroponics needs costly nutritional value to nourish the vegetation,
as well as aquaculture needs regular cleaning of the systems which
will cause to waste removal problems.
Aquaculture
needs to eliminated unwanted nutritional value from the system, in
normal condition it will implies that some amount of the water is
taken out, usually once a day. In aquaponic system, water from
fish tank is circulated to plants that grow on the grow beds.
Some
microorganisms are live on the top of grow beds. The
microorganisms do great deal to transform fish ammonia waste become
nitrates which very useful for plants. The process of
transforming ammonia into nitrates is called “nitrogen cycle”.
Nitrifying
bacteria turn fish waste materials in water into plant-available
nutritional value. This nutrient rich mineral water needs to be
got rid of then changed with water that is clean. The
vegetation use these nutritional value as their primary source of
nourishment.
The
fish also get advantage from this process, since the plants filters
the water, providing clean and fresh water for the fish to live in.
Fish get fresh and clean water after the plants absorb nutrient from
water. Even though re-circulating aquaculture and hydroponics
are equally very efficient methods of developing fish and plants.
There
are many types of media that use in grow beds in aquaponic system.
The most common media use for grow beds are gravel and expanded clay
pebbles. Anyway, aquaponic may adopt any hydroponic growing
method. Plants can be planted on floating foam that placed on
water.
Aquaponic
can be used to grown many kind of fresh water fish. High
quantity of fish can be bred in aquaponic system. It is also
only use little amount of water due to recirculating nature of the
systems.
Refer
to some research, aquaponic only use 1/10th of water
compare to amount of water needed to watering plants that growing in
the ground. There are many benefits from aquaponics compare to
aquaculture and hydroponics if both are implemented separately.
Big
issue from aquaculture is forming of fish waste in the tank.
The water need to be clean up regularly using filtering system and
dispose the waste to environment. In other side, chemical
fertilizer that use in hydroponic sooner or later will contaminate
the water. Since the water become toxic, it can be used for
irrigation anymore and have to disposed to environment.
Both
of these issues no longer exist in aquaponic and make it as solution
instead. Since aquaponice feed plants using waste water from
fish tank, then no need to use chemical fertilizer. Finally
there is no pollution to environment both from fish waste or chemical
toxic.
Due
to limitation to have water in some region, aquaponics that require
small amount of water, may become solution to develop plant farming
in this region. In other word it is possible to produce food in
region that normally cannot produce it. Fish component
from aquaponic may be also harvested and can be consumed.
Aquaponic Environmental Benefits
Reducing use of water
Due
to water scarcity in many region, method of producing food with less
water is become important. Only small amount of water is lost,
since water from fish tank is recirculated to plant growing beds and
back to the fish tank. Water only to be lost from evaporation,
percolation or even runoff.
Reducing use of chemical fertilizer
In
aquaponic, the use of chemical component is minimum since plants
receive the nutrient from fish waste. Moreover, the usage of
chemical substance can be bad for the fish, and may disturb natural
interaction between fish and its habitat.
Minimizes erosion by reduction of the need to plough the land
The
issue related to erosion is critical, with acres of valuable topsoil
flush by and wind, streams suffering from buildup of silt.
Aquaponic commercial benefits
In
general big farm food production requires good quality of land soil
and need to use considerable amount of water.
Not
all region have a lot of fertile area, and the cost of this area is
high, for that reason we need alternative way to produce food.
The good think is many people can build their own aquaponic easily,
no matter the location as long as there is water supply. It can
be just simple as rainwater stored in tanks.
It
is very expensive the cost to build and maintain common horticultural
farm, including cost for tractors, spraying pesticide, fertilizer and
other. Those cost is very minimum in aquaponic system,
specially cost on using chemical product, and it will be save money
of the farmer. It is not good to use chemical compound for long
time of period, however we always use them to produce our food.
Backyard Aquaponic Benefits
One
of benefits for aquaponic is we can reduce big amount of water for
watering plants comparing to conventional plant farming.
Placing
plants and roots are above ground level is another benefit of
aquaponic. It will give a chance to plant, grow and harvest
without hardly bending your back and no need to digging up the soil.
Young
kids also can learn on how to growing plants and fish from aquaponic
in the backyard. They may also learn about ecology and water
reservation.
