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    Backyard Aquaponics
    Backyard Aquaponics
    Backyard Aquaponics
    Ebook112 pages1 hour

    Backyard Aquaponics

    By Jamie Brown

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Aquaponics is the food production system of the future, combining Aquaculture and Hydroponics into a sustainable edible ecosystem.
    This is a DYI manual on Backyard Aquaponics using low cost and recycled materials where possible. A "Must Read" for those concerned about sustainability, self-sufficiency and the future.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJamie Brown
    Release dateJan 7, 2010
    ISBN9781452305028
    Backyard Aquaponics

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    3.5/5

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    • 3/5
      A good starting DIY manual. I thought it'd be more exhaustive and detailed, but the author only focused on Australian climate. I believe that should've been in the disclaimer or introductory piece.

      Though most concepts are applicable outside Australia, the limited writing makes it hard to follow the steps if you're doing DIY in a different region.

    Book preview

    Backyard Aquaponics - Jamie Brown

    Foreword

    This book has been updated in October 2018. Over the last 8 years links have expired, Climate Change is rapidly changing our environment (all but the most rabid sceptic would agree), and I have personal updates on my systems.

    This book is a practical guide to Aquaponics that will enable anyone with hand tools and common sense to build a system in their backyard. It is not designed to be an encyclopedia of Aquaponics. Hopefully it is a useful template for achieving something that will become very important in the future – self sufficiency in food. You can put your toe in the water by building a system with a few Goldfish and a single container of plants; the principles are the same no matter what size your system is.

    The book describes a system built in an Australian temperate/sub-tropical climate, but the principles are applicable where ever you live.

    Your climate will influence what species of fish and what fruits and vegetables are most suited to your area, but the system characteristics will not vary much from my description here.

    All Third world populations are very aware of the need for food security, but western societies have become divorced from this reality; food comes from supermarkets. However a future with high energy costs, lack of fresh drinking water and Climate Change will profoundly affect this attitude.

    The financial system collapse (2008), crashing Real Estate markets and looming depression makes it all the more imperative to start planning immediately.

    The Future of Australian agriculture.

    Australia is a dry continent destined to become drier as the effects of Climate Change take hold.

    The soils of our ancient continent have been blown or washed away, leaving millions of square miles of barren plains. Millions of hectares of once prime agricultural land have been turned into salt encrusted wastelands by inappropriate irrigation practises, and the Murray-Darling basin appears to be in terminal decline.

    Much of the well watered arable land has been built over by encroaching urban expansion. The dams that service our major cities are plainly inadequate to provide the needs of growing populations; and yet more dams are not a good ecological solution for the problem, flooding good land and destroying down stream ecosystems and diversity.

    Grain crops are being devastated by lack of rain, unseasonable rain and flash flooding.

    Compounding this is the phenomenon of "Peak Oil". When 50% of the world’s available reserves of oil have been used we have reached Peak Production, and when demand exceeds supply, fuel prices will rise dramatically. This will have a huge impact in countries like Australia, where all goods are trucked across vast distances. The food production centres are long distances from the cities where most Australians live.

    Transportation is not the only issue; the fertiliser industry is heavily dependant on the oil industry. Western agriculture is completely dependant on the application of huge amounts of synthetic fertilisers to maintain the high yields our population densities need.

    The old methods of maintaining rich, well structured soil are no longer followed . Our modern soils are dead, lacking the rich micro-environment of bacteria, fungi, worms and organic matter. Crops are maintained by chemicals and fertilisers derived from oil. Farms are chemical factories that produce food.

    The future of Australian agriculture looks bleak, so how can we sustain a population of 20-30 million people?

    The underlying problem is of course that our population is at an unsustainable level for the carrying capacity of the environment. But this is a political and social problem that is not going to go away.

    It is very clear that we as a society and as individuals need to urgently rethink our priorities. Our future is one where food and water security needs to become the primary concern of all families; no government will be able to guarantee these essentials for us.

    ~~~ The Basics ~~~

    Aquaponics

    Aquaponics is a remarkable combination of Aquaculture and Hydroponics that recycles nutrients, uses a fraction of the water of traditional agriculture and yet is amazingly productive without the addition of fertilisers and pesticides.

    Aquaculture.

    Fish or crustaceans are kept in ponds, cages and tanks at very high stocking levels to make the venture commercially viable.

    To achieve commercial densities requires extremely good environmental management to avoid health and disease issues that could decimate the stock.

    Factors such as pH, Dissolved Oxygen (DO), temperature, biological filtration and food quantity and quality are constantly monitored to ensure the highest possible marketable yield in the shortest possible time.

    Hydroponics.

    The crops are kept in a soil-free environment and fed on mixtures of soluble chemicals tailored to the requirements of the plant species.

    A critical factor in hydroponics is the maintenance of a healthy environment for the plant roots – a suitable pH and sufficient oxygen to allow respiration. As with Aquaculture, commercial Hydroponic operations need to carefully monitor the environment to ensure the highest possible yield in the shortest possible time.

    From the above two descriptions you can see that the needs of Aquaculture & Hydroponics are remarkably similar - they both require a sophisticated intervention of technology to maintain the systems.

    Aquaculture has to ensure the water oxygen levels are maintained, and the toxic effluent from the fish is removed, or the fish die. Hydroponics requires a constant replenishment of the soluble chemical nutrients – or the plants die.

    By combining the two systems into a much more natural system – Aquaponics – they complement each other perfectly; fish produce the nutrients that the plants need; plants remove the nutrients that kill the fish; oxygen levels are maintained by the cycling of the water through a natural system similar to that in nature.

    Of course without using more sophisticated technology commercial fish stocking densities cannot be achieved. However the aim of this article is not to demonstrate how to set up a commercial farm. It is

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