How Does Aquaponics Work?

A simplified explanation...

Take a pot of clean fresh water.

Put a fish in it.

Feed the fish.

When the water gets dirty then pour that water on a potted plant that is potted in such a way so that the excess water can be captured as it slowly drains out of the plant pot. A lot of sand in the pot might do the trick.

Replace the dirty fish water with clean fresh water.

Repeat that process as often as necessary to keep both fish and plant growing healthy and strong.

That approach would probably work with just 1 fish and perhaps 1 plant. And maybe as your fish got bigger you could add more plants. The fish excrement would provide the necessary nutrients to feed the plant and the plant would filter the water so that it remained safe for the fish just as plants and fish coexist in nature.

Problem is: when you add a second fish and a third, a forth, a fifth and eventually you've got thousands of fish... Wait, that will never happen. There's no way you can pour water from pot to pot that fast doing it by hand, you'll end up having a fish kill long before you get to thousands of fish. At least, you'd better hope your fish kill comes early.

At some point you're going to need an electric powered pumping system to pump the excrement and nutrient rich water up to the plants where gravity can let it fall back down to the fish tank. At some point you're probably going to need filters to improve water quality to keep your fish healthy. And you're almost certain to need to add oxygen to the water to support the large numbers of fish you'll be stocking in your tanks.

Aquaponics simply mimics the natural cycle of water contaminated with animal waste to compost to plant food to clean water returned to the pond. The difference is: in Aquaponics we use technology to push the boundaries and increase production of fish and plants. What we're really doing is concentrating and speeding up the process.

From Wikipedia:

"Aquaponics /ˈækwəˈpɒnɨks/, is a food production system that combines conventional aquaculture (raising aquatic animals such as snails, fish, crayfish or prawns in tanks) with hydroponics (cultivating plants in water) in a symbiotic environment. In normal aquaculture, excretions from the animals being raised can accumulate in the water, increasing toxicity. In an aquaponic system, water from an aquaculture system is fed to a hydroponic system where the by-products are broken down by nitrification bacteria into nitrates and nitrites, which are utilized by the plants as nutrients. The water is then recirculated back to the aquaculture system."

Also from Wikipedia:

"The development of modern aquaponics is often attributed to the various works of the New Alchemy Institute and the works of Dr. Mark McMurtry et al. at the North Carolina State University." 

That's right, modern Aquaponics was pioneered here in North Carolina over 30 years ago at taxpayer expense. I think it's time we capitalized on it.