Aquaponics

Our goal has always been to produce organic and sustainable food, whether it was fruit; veggies; eggs and of course, chickens. Our plan was to eventually branch out into other forms of animal husbandry i.e. sheep/goats; ducks and depending on the size of the property we settled on, cows and pigs.
It was to my great delight to stumble onto aquaponics and add fish to the menu!

Aquaponics combines aquaculture and hydroponics to create a closed loop system.
A basic explanation of  how it works is that waste water from the fish tank is delivered to the grow beds, and plants 'clean' the water and the water is returned to the fish. The actual work is done by bacteria through the nitrogen cycle, and this fantastic diagram (thanks to Joel at Backyard Aquaponics) explains the process:

The Nitrogen Cycle

Check the rest of the page here: http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/information.html

There a few kits that one can buy, but I decided to build my own system so I could understand how each component works and test a few different things along the way. After much research, I decided the IBC setup would be best. Here are 2 of the best aquaponics forums I use:

• Joel Malcolm's Backyard Aquaponics forum
• Murray Hallam's Practical Aquapoincs forum (I also bought Murray's DVD's which were a great help)

More to come...