aquaponics
Below you will find links regarding aquaponics, a special type of aquaculture (aquafarming). Aquaponics is the symbiotic cultivation of plants and aquatic animals in a recirculation environment. The main idea behind aquaponics is to make the environment more similar to the wild, where the refuse of one organism is utilized as food by another. When fish and other animals are farmed, their waste products accumulate in the water if they are kept in a close system such as a tank or pond. The waste contains compounds that are dangerous to fish, but valuable for plants. By letting plants absorb the compounds you will make the water less toxic to for the fish and hopefully also get thriving plants. With aquaponics, it is therefore possible for farmers to yield two harvests instead of just one, e.g. tilapia and lettuce. Aquaponics work with both freshwater and saltwater, depending on which species you wish to cultivate. The Aztecs who created the chinampas is one of the first known peoples to carry out aquaponics, with other early finds hailing from Egypt and South-East Asia. In China, farmers realized that adding farm waste to fish ponds could increase their yield and carps where often farmed in rice paddies.
