How do you like the idea of picking veggies and scooping a fish for dinner? Sounds like fun. You start to think of camping or going to a far-flung farm. What about having all this fun right in your own backyard and transforming all these harvests into a mouth-watering concoction in your own kitchen that sits in a busy metropolis. With aquaponics at home, that is a possibility.
Understanding the Concept of Aquaponics
Many who have grown tired of consuming chemically grown vegetables have responded positively to aquaponics. Those who love to grow vegetables in pots around the house or to tend vegetable gardens are likely to adopt Aquaponics, as it offers the same benefits and more. This is a 21st century gardening where the vegetables are grown in soil less medium with some swimming companions.
Aquaponics involves putting together fish or other aquatic species (aquaculture) and certain species of vegetables (hydroponics) in one combined system. These two complement each other. The waste water in the fish tanks, loaded with polluting materials (fecal matter, ammonia, uneaten fish food) are pumped into the hydroponic setup for the veggies to use these nutrients instead of chemical fertilizers. Once the plants suck up these nutrients, the clean water is re-channeled back to the fish tanks.
Having It Right Where You Want It
Anyone can have an aquaponics setup in any space in the house or outside – in the patio, roof, backyard, or porch. One can find the pleasure of a Do It Yourself (DIY) system using inexpensive aquaponics system and some recycled materials.
Having aquaponics at home offers tremendous benefits. For one, it uses only about 5 to 10 percent of the amount of water that is used in conventional gardening techniques. If the setup is located in a greenhouse or somewhere roofed, the evaporation is even less significant.
You can say goodbye to veggies and fish that are heavily laden with pesticides and inorganic fertilizers. This is a guarantee because adding these chemicals in the hydroponics can transmit the chemical to the fish tanks that can kill them. Thus, those who are into aquaponics are forced to go organic all the way.
The Basics of Aquaponics at Home
To get started with growing food in your own home, you need these essentials:
• An energy efficient pump - needed to pump water from the fish tank to the grow bed and back. Pumping of water is done through the tubing by gravity flow.
• A fish tank and a grow bed with hydroponic components. A grow bed is the container for the crops. Thorough cleaning before planting is important to wash all traces of ammonia.
• A tubing system to pump and cycle water back and forth between the fish tank and the grow beds. The flow can either be a constant flow or ebb or flow system. I´ll discuss those in future posts.
• A water heater that is regulated by a thermostat - only for places that have the four seasons or cold climates. This maintains the temperature of the water in the system. Generally, the temperature must be between 70 and 86 degrees Fahrenheit or 21 and 30 degrees Celsius.
• Bedding in the form of clay or gravel for grow bed. The crops’ roots dangle into the water, but the plants actually rest in a clay or gravel grow bed that makes the filtration of the wastewater possible. Thus, these bedding materials offer plant support, function as biofilter, enhances high plant growth yield, and provides water buffering.
• Test kits that will allow one to monitor vital conditions of certain ecological factors such as pH. The acceptable range is almost neutral at about 6.7 to 6.9.
The concept of aquaponics at home is something that makes it possible for gardeners-at-heart to grow vegetables and fish without much difficulty. In fact, those who find building a DIY system too much of a hassle can always buy a ready-to-use aquaponics kit.
