As natural and sustainable resources are limited, the challenge is to achieve global food security while having a positive impact on the environment and society. Sustainable agricultural practices provide the solution to that challenge. While aquaponics techniques have been cultivating food as far back as the Aztecs, it has only recently emerged as a progressive agricultural science.
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Food Production System |
Aquaponics is the integration of aquaculture and hydroponics, which results in one of the most prolific and sustainable food production systems in the world. It’s nature’s symbiotic system that mixes plant crops and aquatic life in a closed‐loop, recirculating environment that requires no soil, uses 90% less water than traditional farming, and has no pollutant by-products
| Fish produce waste, bacteria convert the waste into nutrients that plants use for growth, and the plants purify and improve the water quality before it’s returned to the fish. |  |
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Process |
In aquaponics, aquaculture tanks cultivate good bacteria while fish waste and by‐products in the water produce toxic ammonia. The bacteria reacts with the ammonia and creates nitrites in the water, which is fed to hydroponic plant beds where more beneficial bacteria convert the nitrites into nitrates. The nitrates are absorbed by the plants as nutrients. The biologically filtrated water continues to circulate back to the fish tank where the process begins again.
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Aquaponics Project Inc.
Grasonville, MD and Winter Park, FL
