What are the benefits of aquaponics?

The unique combination of modern aquaculture and hydroponics is a relatively new concept. However, aquaponics has a tremendous potential for growing very high quality food (fish, plants and also herbs) around the world in a very efficient and space saving manner.

Given below are a few of the several advantages associated with aquaponic food production:

1. In aquaponics, the plant spacing can be highly intensive providing you the opportunity to grow more number of plants with the given space.

2. No herbicides or pesticides can be used in aquaponics and this makes the resultant end products very safer and healthier for consumption.

3. Owing to the high densities in the fish tank, the plants grow and develop very quickly in an aquaponic system.

4. Aquaponics consumes merely a fraction of the water that is consumed by traditional field production. This is mainly because no water is consumed by weeds or is wasted unnecessarily.

5. Aquaponics makes full utilization of the nutrient-rich water emanating from aquaculture that would have otherwise been wasted or would require an expensive filtration process, and in the process provides a truly natural and organic form of nutrients for nurturing the plants.

6. All soil borne diseases are eliminated in aquaponics as no soil is used in vegetable production.

7. Aquaponics certainly eliminates all the time and cost associated with the mixing of conventional hydroponic nutrients.

8. In case of growth in a greenhouse or depending on the prevailing climatic conditions, it is possible to grow crops round the year in an aquaponics system. All it takes to do this is just 15 minutes of your time spent in daily maintenance activities.

Aquaponics has tremendous potential to be picked on as a hobby. It is very much possible to assemble a home aquarium, with ornamental or food fish, in combination with a miniature garden growing flowers, vegetables or herbs. A hobby aquaponics system, depending on its size, can easily serve as a food production system or as a beautiful show piece!