Aquaponics

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GLOBAL AQUATICS

Global Aquatics was one of the early pioneers developing the first systems in 1986 to turn fish waste into valuable profits

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	Aquaponics is the production of plant crops utilizing the waste water and organic matter derived from the production of aquatic animals.
Since the beginning of time farmers have used the manure from farm animals to fertilize their crops. Aquaponics does the same thing only with a twist.

In order to explain how aquaponics work, let's first explain how nature works. I am sure there will be comments on my explanation here, but few of us are biologists, so I will take a laymen's approach to make it easier to get the idea without a lot of long Latin words no one will remember tomorrow.

One of the biggest concerns in modern times is the environmental impact from farmers spreading raw animal manure on fields for crop fertilization. In many areas of the world this "Over fertilization" has contaminated under ground well water, rivers and lakes. Generally speaking it is not so much a matter of the amount of manure that is placed on the fields, as it is the form in which it is put there in the first place. In order to understand this we must first understand the process in which nature converts solid animal waste into a form that plants can use.

Unlike chewing animals with a mouth and teeth, plants can not consume solids. Instead they absorb their foods either through their roots or leaves. In order for this to happen the solids must be reduced to their chemical foundations. We call this the "denification process". Although the process is a bit more complex, the easiest way to explain it is something like this: First the solids must be exposed to water to feed certain bacteria which begin to break them down. Like all living animals, these bacteria also excrete waste, ammonia. This excretion now leaves a food source for another type of bacteria that feed on the ammonia. Once again there is excretion involved. It is called Nitrite. It is at this point that most run off pollution occurs. Manure placed on the surface of a field will gather enough moisture in time for bacteria to convert most of it to Nitrite. However, since this process can take several days, should enough rain fall occur, this chemical, Nitrite, can be now diluted with rain water and carried deep into the ground to well water, or can be carried to rivers and lakes, thereby causing nitrite pollution. Also at this this time many other chemicals are being released such as Phosphorus. For the most part most plants cannot consume nitrites, and once they dissipate into the ground or waterways the next step in the process can not happen very quickly.

Since Mother Nature wastes nothing she has provided us with still another bacteria. This group now consumes nitrite. The resulting excretion from this group is Nitrate. For my explanation nitrate is a fairly loose term for the forms of nutrients released at this point, however, the point is, this is the stage of the process that supplies plant food. Once again however, these nutrients are also a problem when washed in to lakes and rivers, for it is these groups of chemicals which encourage and feed algae.

In a fish culture system we have waste in two forms. First we have discharged water. This water in itself already contains a lot of nutrients and small solid particulate. The other form of waste is solid matter. Either of these two turned loose in a river or lake will cause a problem. They can be sprayed on a field and they will break down much faster than normal farm animal manure because of the fact that it is already very wet and there are bacteria working on it when discharged. However, this is still not the final form for plant food. At Global Aquatics we have incorporated in all of our S-series fish systems devises to totally digest the solids by means of an aerobic digester vessel and then coupled that to special plants production trays. The nutrients are then delivered to plants by a timered pump. Unlike Hydro-ponics, our plants are not growing in standing water, but rather in porous media which traps the nutrients around the plant roots.

Global Aquatics developed the first true aquaponics system in 1986 as a part of an experiment in conjunction with the Food and Economic Department at the University of Delaware. The original scope of the experiment had nothing to do with what we know today as aquaponics, but rather was an experiment to build a better biological filter to provide pollution free aquaculture discharge. The experiment started in April of 1984 and over 100 different plants were used to see which ones would work best to remove all of the nutrients from the water. By the end of 1986 we had discovered a whole new agriculture science. We had developed equipment and methods that not only consumed the nutrients, we had figured out how to grow vegetable crops that were far superior to normal hydroponics crops in both texture and taste. The reason these were so superior was because they were grown with natural organic fertilizers instead of chemicals. Since that time we have continuously researched and refined our methods and equipment to the point where today we are second to none in our knowledge on the subject.

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