Vegetables are necessary for a balanced diet. They offer you all the vitamins and minerals your body needs in order to develop properly. Unfortunately, vegetables have become quite expensive lately and fewer producers choose to grow organic vegetables. This is why their quality has become poorer and the taste is not the same as the one with which you were used with when you were young. But there is nothing to be worried about as now you can grow your own veggies effortless with an aquaponics system.

What Is Aquaponics?

This type of gardening involves growing fish and vegetables in a total interdependence.

Thus, you will not only have fresh vegetables at any hour and period of the year, but you will also be able to grow fish in a much easier way than if you would have chosen to set up an aquaculture.

Yet, why are the fish so important in the aquaponics?

Well, the first step in setting up your aquaponic system is that of purchasing a fish tank and, of course, the fish. This is mainly because they are the ones which are going to provide food for your plants.

Once you place the fish in the tank you can say you have started your aquaponic garden. This is mainly because placing the fish in the water is a similar step to preparing the land in traditional gardening.

In about a month the fish will create the perfect environment for the plants to grow as their excrements will turn into the perfect nutrients on which plants can feed.

Once the water is filled with nutrients, the seeds are placed in special pots which will be submersed in the tank so that the water can reach the seeds.

The fish will continue to produce food for the seeds, which will grow and develop into mature plants thriving on the food offered by the fish.

How Does This Helps?

This will not only make your plants grow bigger and bigger as time goes by, but it will also clean the water for the fish so that they can grow and develop as well.

Taking good care of your fish will result in good, tasty and healthy vegetables. Thus, if you already have a fish tank in your house or you are thinking of purchasing one for your children, why not combine your pleasure with the practical things and use the tank for an aquaponic system.

Your fish will be happy, while your family will have lots of fresh vegetables for each and every meal.

Where To Get More Information?

You can learn more about aquaponics, and how to build your own system in Aquaponics 4 You system.  Below video shows what this system covers.

 

The perfect balance and synergy between the fish and plants in an Aquaponics System depends on the bacteria which breakdown fish waste and transform it into plant fertilizer. Starting up your Aquaponics system involves making sure that the bacteria grows and thrives in your system, and you will need to give it some time before the population of bacteria can support fish and plant growth.

How does aquaponics system works?

As soon as you put fish in your tanks, they will start producing ammonia (in their wastes). Nitrosomonas bacteria in the air will populate the water surface, and start converting the toxic ammonia into nitrites.

Nitrites are still toxic, but their presence will attract nitrobacter bacteria. These will colonize your system and convert the nitrites into nitrates, which are harmless to the fish and excellent fertilizes to the plants.

When this happens, you will be able to detect nitrates in your system, and the concentrations of both ammonia and nitrites will drop below 0.5ppm. This will signal that your system is now up and running! This will generally take about four to six weeks in total.

What is the safe method to start this system?

A method of starting up the aquaponics system which is becoming increasingly popular is the ‘fishless’ one, where you do not use the fish as the initial source of ammonia. Instead, you start up the system without any fish in the tank and add artificial ammonia.

To do this, you should buy Cycling Kits, which will give you all the tools you need to start your system. Then, you add the fish once the system is up and running and the bacteria are thriving (i.e. when the levels of ammonia and nitrites drop to below 0.5ppm).

This method is safer, as there is no danger of having fish dying due to initial ammonia spikes. If you are using the ‘fishless’ method, you can also speed up the process by modifying the other parameters.

How you can speed up this method?

One of the main ways to do this is to use higher temperatures (typically 77 to 86°F), as bacteria multiply more rapidly at these temperature ranges.

You can also use a pH of about 7 to 8 to speed up bacterial growth and oxygenate the tank as much as possible, for example by using air stones and some kind of water jetting action.

In addition, you can also buy bacterial colonies, which will definitely speed up the process. Alternatively, get some filter material or gravel from an established, disease-free aquarium as this will be rich in the bacterial colonies we want.

You can also get some rocks and pebbles from a river or lake, but be careful of the risk of introducing disease and parasites.

Where To Get More Information?

You can learn more about aquaponics, and how to build your own system in Aquaponics 4 You system.  Below video shows what this system covers.