Aquaponics is a food production system that combines conventional Aquaculture, (raising aquatic animals such as snails, fish, crayfish or prawns in tanks), with hydroponics (cultivating plants in water) in a symbiotic environment. In normal Aquaculture, excretions from the animals being raised can accumulate in the water, increasing toxicity. In an Aquaponics system, water from an Aquaculture system is fed to a Hydroponics system where the by-products are broken down by nitrogen-fixing bacteria into nitrates and nitrites, which are utilized by the plants as nutrients. The water is then re circulated back to the Aquaculture system.
Aquaponics has ancient roots, although there is some debate on its first occurrence: Aztec cultivated agricultural islands known as Chinampas in a system considered by some to be the first form of Aquaponics for agricultural use where plants were raised on stationary (and sometime movable) islands in lake shallows and waste materials dredged from the Chinampa canals and surrounding cities were used to manually irrigate the plants. South China and Thailand who cultivated and farmed rice in paddy fields in combination with fish are cited as examples of early Aquaponics systems. These poly cultural farming systems existed in many Far Eastern countries and raised fish such as the Oriental loach, Swamp eel , Common and Crucian Carp as well as pond snails in the paddies.
