Aquaponics

Aquaponics is a food-production system that combines fish or other aquatic animal rearing with hydroponic plant cultivation. It links animal waste, microbial nutrient conversion, and plant uptake in a shared water cycle.

Recirculating aquaculture system: An aquaculture system that filters and reuses water rather than continually replacing it. Aquaponics adapts its water-reuse infrastructure to supply plants as well as aquatic animals.
Aquaculture: The farming of aquatic organisms, including fish, shellfish, and aquatic plants. Aquaponics incorporates aquatic animal production as one half of its food system.
Media-based aquaponics: An aquaponic design in which plants grow in beds filled with a solid substrate. The medium can support roots while trapping solids and hosting beneficial microbes.
Soil-based agriculture: Crop production in which plants grow in soil that supplies physical support and contributes nutrients. Aquaponics grows plants without soil and depends on managed water circulation.
Biofilter: A filter that supports microorganisms which transform dissolved pollutants in water. Its microbial community converts fish waste into forms plants can use.
Hydroponics: Plant cultivation using a nutrient solution rather than soil as the primary growing medium. Aquaponics uses hydroponic techniques while drawing nutrients from aquatic animal waste.
Nutrient film technique: A hydroponic method that passes a shallow, continuous stream of nutrient solution over plant roots. Aquaponic systems can adapt this channel-based method for crops with relatively small root systems.
Integrated multi-trophic aquaculture: Aquaculture that combines species at different trophic levels to use wastes from one as resources for another. It also recycles nutrients, but typically integrates aquatic species rather than hydroponic crops.
Nitrification: The microbial oxidation of ammonia to nitrite and then nitrate. This conversion makes toxic fish excretion less harmful and supplies plants with nitrogen.
Nitrogen cycle: The circulation and transformation of nitrogen among organisms, soil, water, and the atmosphere. Aquaponics relies on microbial steps in this cycle to move nitrogen from waste to plants.

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