Indoor Aquaponics using your home aquarium!

What is Aquari-ponics? Nothing (yet). It’s a made up word! It’s a twist on the word Aquarium and Aquaponics. It’s the merging of two things I love – My fish tanks and eating. I couldn’t sleep one night, what can I say?

With that being said…

Aquariponics is all about making a very small scale, indoor home aquaponics system using an ornamental aquarium. You know, the one that’s in your living room or in the reception area of your office.

First, what is aquaponics? According to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaponics :

Aquaponics is the symbiotic cultivation of plants and aquatic animals in a recirculating environment.

Functionally, hooking up a hydroponics system to a fish tank. You feed the fish, the fish do their thing in the water, then that water is given to the plants which uses the fishy-poo water as fertilizer. The plant’s process of pulling nutrients out of the water cleans the water for the fish. This clean water goes back into the fish tank. Just like one of those filters that hangs on the back of the tank, except you get to eat the filter cartridge when it’s full!

We will discuss adding a hydroponics system to your new or existing fish tank to get started in the fascinating world of aquaponics. The focus will be on very small systems that will look and work good indoors.

Imagine growing your own fresh salads and herbs while at the same time, needing to clean your aquarium less often!

Being that I have had at least one aquarium, usually 2 or more at any given moment during the last 25 years or so, thus I will take an aquarist’s viewpoint of adding an aquaponics system to an aquarium.