Gaia Aquaponics

Friendly Aquaponics System with a few modifications

What is Aquaponics?

Aquaponics is both new and old. It is a system of producing fish and vegetables that combines the well-developed technologies of both aquaculture and hydroponics. It conserves water, increases efficiency due to dual use of facilities and employees, minimizes energy use and other costs, gives the producer flexibility to meet trends, and maximizes production and profit.

It is not in widespread use yet, because aquaculture producers just think fish and imagine problems with plants, and hydroponics producers just think vegetables and imagine problems with fish. This is if they think about it at all. The truth is that when combined, each system nicely solves some of the problems inherent in the other system, without the expensive and technologically involved solutions that those operations utilize now.

Farming side (Aquaponics VS Conventional farming)

1.  Less ongoing water usage which about 10% of conventional farms method.
2.  No need for heavy machinery.
3.  No digging, no weeding so less than half of the work for same amount of produce.
4.  Can glow 5 time of veritable from same space.
5.  Most of vegetable harvest about half of glowing time.
6.  Less contamination from harmful bacteria so keeps twice longer after harvest.
7.  Less pest problems and no chemical can used at all other wise kill the fishes.
8.  Easy to change glow plan.
9.  Easy to create harvest plan according to the need of market.
10. By setting up cover, can glow year around, less effected by the weather.
11.  All in all much more profitable business venture because less cost( no fertilizer, no fuel for machine, less work to do etc ) more produce in shorter harvesting time, without any chemical and better product so better market value plus fish to add the produce.

Aquaponics VS Hydroponics

1.  No need to buy liquid fertiliser because fish poo replace that.
2.  More healthy produce because plant get wide spectrum of nutrients and no chemical used.
3.  Most hydroponics system need to flash system every 3 month also to avoid bacterial contamination so wast lot of water by doing that.

Aquaculture side (Aquaponics VS Conventional Aquaculture)

1.  No need to deal with waist from fish because used as nutrient for vegetables.
2.  Can mix different species( fish, fresh water prowns, Yabbiy, etc) variety of produce.
3.  Can feed own produce (vegetable etc) to some type of fish.
4.  Safer fish because no chemicals are used.

There are many Aquaponics systems, which is the best?

I researched internet intensively for months and believed that Friendly Aquaponics system the most effective system I could find out there. And most famous commercial system is Virgin Island University system. But Friendly Aquaponics in Hawaii start off with their design but modified by operating commercial farm for 4 years.

What they say about their system compared with Virgin Island system.

We improved our original system designs so we got 4.3 times as many plants per square foot of raft area for the same cost; figured out how to run them on one-fifth the electrical consumption and how to build them for one-fourth the cost in materials. We got the first aquaponics systems in the world USDA certified organic. We figured out how to grow prawns (macrobrachium rosenbergii) in the troughs.

My comment on Friendly Aquaponics system.

1.  Simplest design I seen so far — Less cost to set up(less than Half of other), Less cost to operate (20% of other) less part so easier to build and easy to maintain.
2.  Raft system so no medium used, no siphon — cost less to set, easy to operate.
3.  Easy to scale up by just adding grow area because of how it designed.
4.  First and only Aquaponics system got organic certification.