Learning the meaning of Aquaponics entails having to understand two words that is basically makes up or is the important components onf Aquaponics. By understanding the meaning of the two words, Aquaculture and Hydroponics, it will be easier to explain and know what Aquaponics means. Aquaculture is basically the process of plant or animal cultivation or development under water. This means that Aquaculture is the process of taking care of underwater plants and animals, both salt and freshwater that is. On the other hand, Hydroponics is simply plant cultivation without the involvement of soil as a medium to grow the said plants. Now in order to understand Aquaponics, it is simply defined as a combination of both Hydroponics and Aquaculture. To explain further, Aquaponics is the process of raising fishes and growing plants in an environment wherein both can benefit from each other.
Most of you will ask on how does Aquaponics really work? The Aquaponics system simply works by having the fish and plants benefit from each other. The fishes are responsible to provide nutrients to the plants with the use of their wastes, at the same time, the plants are responsible in cleaning the water and providing it with oxygen supply before the water is being brought back to the fish tank. This way both the fish and plants will grow healthy because of the benefits that they get from each other. For better understanding, let me explain further on how the whole process works. Fishes are grown in a fish tank that is directly connected to grow beds which is the place or the area where the plants are planted and grown. Grow beds and the fish tank is connected by pipes that has different purposes. One or a set of pipes is used to pump water from the fish tank towards the grow beds. water from the fish tank carries fish wastes that will be utilized by the plants as their natural fertilizers and will make them grow healthy. On the other hand, another pipe is to pump back the water from the grow beds towards the fish tank. Water that comes from the grow beds is now free fro fish wastes and contains oxygen content needed by the fishes to grow. Also the water is cleaned using a filtering system made up usually of pebbles, sands and stones.
Here are some of the benefits of utilizing the Aquaponics method of growing plants and fishes:
– Provides natural fertilizer for the plants. As mentioned earlier, since the fertilizer utilized by the plants comes from the fishes directly, it does not contain harmful chemicals that may have damaging effects on the plants.
-Water conservation is another benefit that you can get in making use of the Aquaponics system of growing plants and fishes. you can conserve water because there is no need for you to change the water on the fish tank very often, instead you can just add little amounts of water which will just replace the water that is lost during evaporation. There is no need to change water on the fish tank often because water is cleaned and filtered by the plants and the water-filtering system. Aside from that, water is also supplied with ample amounts of oxygen needed by the fish.
– One may think that Aquaponics system can only grow limited kinds of fish and plants, but another good thing that Aquaponics offers is that you have a wide variety of choices of what kinds of fish or plants to grow.
Aquaponics is something that most people are not accustomed to do but it is good to know that this kind off system in growing plants and fishes is very helpful in order for us to provide environment for both the fishes and plants to mutually benefit from each other.
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