(Excerpt from Nelson and Pade Consulting at Aquaponics.com)

“Aquaponics is the combination of aquaculture (fish farming) and hydroponics (soilless plant growing). In aquaponics, the nutrient-rich water that results from raising fish provides a source of natural fertilizer for the growing plants.  As the plants consume the nutrients, they help to purify the water that the fish live in.  A natural microbial process keeps both the fish and plants healthy and helps sustain an environment in which they both can thrive.  Essentially, aquaponics is organic gardening, but without the dirt.”

“In aquaponics, both fish and plants are grown in one body of water, using one infrastructure.  Water circulates through the fish tanks, filters through plant grow beds and then flows back into the fish tanks, completing the cycle. The use of fertilizer is not required because the fish waste provides the nutrients the plants need.  The use of herbicides is not required because there is no soil for weeds to grow in.  The daily water use is minimal and a large volume of food crops can be grown using much less space when compared to growing crops in a field.  Since soil isn’t required, aquaponics can be set up in urban areas to supply food to families and local markets, in arid regions with poor soil, in developing countries, in rural communities, or anywhere else that fresh food is needed.”

When we started Aquaponics and Earth Sustainable Living, you literally had to scour the web to find just a few sites with good information about aquaponics. Within the last two years, however, the subject of aquaponics is all over the internet with new sites of information appearing almost daily.

This is both good and bad. The good part is that the message is getting out and people are being forced in economic hard times to explore new ways of growing fish and crops, plus they are helping to preserve our planet. On the other hand, many of the people running these sites have just copied the material from somewhere else and are simply good business marketers with wonderful-looking web sites. This is not being critical, but I have found that some of the “big talkers” do not even have their own working farm; this was a shock to me.

At Aquaponics and Earth Sustainable Living, we work hands-on at our own cycle of life farm every day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. We use fish waste byproducts to fertilize much of our garden enabling us to simply bring our vegetables straight from the vine to the dinner table. What we do at AESL is a lifestyle for us.