I've read some websites and watched a lot of YouTube videos on aquaponics. I have even spoken briefly to a couple people who have done it, one who has made an attempt at commercially doing it. I love the idea of the system but something I haven't been able to get over in order to try it is, why? Just because it can be done, is it really the best way? My second concern has always been the back up system, it seems all can be lost so easily with a power outage.
I saw the aquaponics systems in the mid 80's for the first time at Disney's Epcot center in Florida as a teen and thought it was awesome. I always loved the idea of the symbiotic, efficiency of it all. But now I wonder if it's the best way. Is an integrated aquaponic system better than a separate
aquaculture system, raising fish and filtering waste to be composted and fed into a soil based greenhouse? I've never read anything on filtering the waste out completely, rather than using it in an aquaponic system. Is it a difficult thing to do versus the aqauponic way? To me it seems there is a lot of time put into balancing an aquaponic system, and monitoring it to keep it balanced as fish grow and are removed and replaced by fry that don't put out anywhere near the same amount of waste. Where in soil you would have a more simple, baseline of nutrients from the soil, boosted and replaced by the composted fish waste. If I remember correctly, the version I saw at Epcot was meant as a demonstration of how food could be grown on a space station, fish in large tubes of water, plants grown in tubes where water was contained and misted over the roots and vacuumed out of the tube as needed. It made sense if you couldn't have soil it was a great system, but if you have soil is it still better?
Using 1/10th of the water I assume is compared to a traditional open air field irrigation system where the water is soaking deeply into the soil and the soil exposed to wind and direct sun between the rows. The growing medium used in aquaponics, with the marble like balls seems it would lead to a lot more evaporation from all that surface area versus a container of soil under the same surrounding conditions. I have thought about deep soil beds raised above equally wide and long tanks of fish would be the way to go. Creating a web of life in the soil, fed with the bi-products of the aquaculture system. I just can't imagine that the non-soil growing medium under a constant flooding and draining all day would use less water than a soil based system sitting next to it using a drip irrigation.
Seeing a short YouTube clip of yours I did love the idea of washing insects off of the plants and being able to plop them right back into the growing medium! Something that did pop into my mind that I had not thought of before seeing it was what about contamination? I know E Colli and some other such things are mostly feed lot or slaughter house problems, but if such a pathogen was introduced to an aquaponic system that wouldn't affect the fish could it live or even flourish in the system and contaminate plants if water was splashed onto them as fish were netted out of the tanks?
This is already longer than I hoped I could make it but finally, just how much back up do you need for the fish? It seems you could lose all your fish so easily is probably the one thing that has always kept me from trying anything with aquaponics. If I check the system at 8pm and the power was to be lost at 9pm without my knowledge, what sort of back up is needed to keep the fish from dying until they are checked on in the morning? Can bottled oxygen be enough if you were to lose power for a full 24 hours, or do you really need a back up generator system if you had an average greenhouse sized system? The one small commercial person I spoke to had a back up generator for the back up generator with tanked oxygen, and it made me think the back up system cost nearly as much as the rest of the set up. It seems lately multiple day power outages for some areas after large storms where I live are getting more and more frequent in the past few years.