Aquaponics Guidelines

Aquaponics is a combination of the words aquaculture (cultivating fish) and hydroponics (growing plants in water without soil) and the eco-innovative technology behind the concept is a combination of the two production systems into one. It is driven by a microbial ecosystem that assists in converting fish effluents into usable plant nutrients while helping deliver plant nutrients across root cell walls. In an aquaponic system, water is kept in circulation. Waste water from the fish is used as nutrients in the horticultural part of the system where plants take up the nutrients provided by the fish waste and cleanse the water before being returned to the fish. Aquaponics is a resource efficient closed loop food production system, mimicking nature itself. This relates to cradle-to-cradle design presenting eco-effectiveness moving beyond zero emissions and produce services and products taking into account social, economic and environmental benefits (McDonough and Braungart, 2002; Braungart et al., 2007; Kumar and Putnam, 2008). Small private and/or educational/research aquaponic systems have been built in several places around the world and the technology is becoming increasingly popular. There is rising interest for industrial show cases, to test whether it can be a profitable business to run large-scale aquaponic systems, raising fish and plants simultaneously for the market. Commercial-scale facilities, although limited in number, can now be found across the globe that incorporate modern technology based on automatic control, improved system balance and health and safety. The conditions to implement an aquaponics industry in Europe are currently being evaluated and several pilot units of different sizes and design have been constructed in most European countries. Only very few of them reach a production area of more than a few square meters (m2). However, systems are now planned or have been built on a medium scale of a few hundreds and up to a few thousand m2. These guidelines present a short history of aquaponics as well as the current status of aquaponics development in Europe. The main types of aquaponics system design are outlined along with guidelines for how the environmental parameters need to be controlled. Moreover, in this guiding document the production parameters are described, including suitable choices of plants and fish species. The market conditions, certification and regulatory issues are discussed, also including added value opportunities linked to experience and educational tourism, technology development and byproducts, e.g. from sludge processing. Finally, conclusions and future perspectives are put forward. It is the hope of the authors that the guidelines can be of value to aquaponics hobbyists as well as others who plan to develop commercial scale aquaponics. The guidelines are built on collaborative work between two European projects: the Leonardo project EuroPonics www.aquaponics.is/europonics) that focuses on vocational training in aquaponics and the EASME project EcoPonics (www.aquaponics.is/ecoponics/) which aims to establish commercial aquaponics in Europe. Further contributors are aquaponics specialists from the management committee of the COST Action FA1305 The EU Aquaponics Hub – Realising Sustainable Integrated Fish and Vegetable Production for the EU (www.euaquaponicshub.com/). ; Evrópusambandið