Transcript

Aquaponics · Hydroponics Daily

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Hi, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily. Today we're going to talk about another
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method of growing hydroponically and that is aquaponics, which sounds very similar to hydro.
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Hydro and aqua, one's Greek, one's Roman, don't ask me which.
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But aquaponics is very different because it involves the culturing of fish at
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the same time as growing the plants.
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So why would you do this? Well, two crops potentially,
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or two forms of produce, but really it's because you can
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feed the fish some sort of organic fertilizer and
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then the fish poop out plant food and that plant food
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is solubilized or suspended in the
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water and that goes into the system here and feeds the
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plants and then the plants might drop off
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a bit of root that the plants the fish might eat and then the whole
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system and the circulatory system continues you
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could put the the the feed that goes in here could be fairly
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cheap and you've produced two high value crops
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at the end of it however there are some complications people
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who've done this commercially like aqua farms in leicester good
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guys up there in leicester just up the road they found that they
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they were growing in lockdown they were getting loads of
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money for their fish they were growing because all the the pet shops the koi
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farms were all closed and so they could sell those but then after lockdown the
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lettuce which was going to local restaurants was selling really well and they
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had to decide what were we going to optimise our system for?
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Is it the fish or is it the lettuce or the microgreens? Because it has to be
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one or the other because the system can't be optimised for both in the real world.
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So that's one issue. The other issue you get is, yeah, you can deliver a lot of N, P, and K in here.
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However, the micronutrients like iron can be an issue.
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So yeah, you can get organic systems and you can get things like iron sulphate,
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but it's not the best form of iron.
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And then other things microbial contamination can be
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an issue and another one is
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ammonia levels building up which harms the fish plants love
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ammonia to some extent but the ammonia levels can
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be harmful to fish the actual system that you run whether that's in rockwool
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or it could be a DWC it could be a deep tank here as well but normally the fish
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are kept separate from the plants you can have small hobby type ones where the
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plants roots are in with the fish however However, that's very rare commercially,
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it's normally they're separated and then a pump circulates the vertigation solution around the system.
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You might have something like freshwater shrimp in here which are
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great for feeding on algae and things like that to
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remove the algae from the plant roots which in in hydroponics
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nft dwc is a major issue so
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aquaponics systems are are very
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widespread now they're very popular in developing countries and and
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in developed countries so you'll find lots of these in say india but
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you'll also find lots in america and the uk not to be confused with aquaculture
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which is just the fish farming is another word for fish farming and so aquaponics
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is when you grow the plants and the fish together you could grow ornamental
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plants like koi goldfish or edible fish like,
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tilapia is that one and obviously not seawater fish
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and i'm not an expert when it comes to animals as you can tell and
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so yeah there are i think there are some that grow in both freshwater
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and seawater i would imagine salmon is one of those but i don't think you can
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do salmon in aquaponics if you know of anyone who's doing salmon in aquaponics
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let me know or anything unusual what's the most unusual type of aquatic animal
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you've known people to do with aquaponics okay hydroponics for daily for today is aquaponics.