Aquaponics vs Hydroponics

1.

Startup speed This is perhaps the biggest downside to aquaponics from a hydroponics
perspective. In hydroponics you just add commercially formulated nutrients to your nutrient
reservoir and you are off to the races. With aquaponics it takes about a month to start your
system by developing a colony of nitrifying bacteria through a process called cycling. The
ammonia from the fish waste will not be converted into the nitrates that the plants are seeking
until this process is complete.

2.

Relationship with bacteria Hydroponic systems tend to be fairly sterile. Ive visited
hydroponic growing facilities where I had to wear coveralls and a hairnet to enter. Not so with
aquaponics. Bacteria are revered by aquaponic gardeners because, as described above, they
are the engine that drives our systems.

3.

Flood and Drain cycle Hydroponic growers using flood and drain techniques generally
only fertigate their plants once every four to six hours. Academic studies and vast, collective
experience have shown that this optimizes the water and fertilizer the plants need. When you
move to an aquaponics system, however, the ideal schedule changes to flooding for 15
minutes every 45 minutes. The reason is that the grow bed now has taken on the additional
role of being the filter for the fish waste. If you only ran the fish water through the filter every
four to six hours, fish waste would build to dangerous levels.
4. Grow bed depth Hydroponic growers tend to use standard 6 deep flood tables and put
pots or cubes with plants in them in

AquaBundance Aquaponics Grow Bed

the flood trays. Again, because an aquaponics grow bed is serving a dual role of both home
for the plants and bio-filter for the fish waste, both need to be considered and optimized. Most
media based aquaponic gardeners use 12 deep grow beds filled with an inert media. Over
the years, side by side trials have shown that this depth of grow bed develops the kind of
robust bacteria colony needed to not only filter the liquid waste, but also to provide an
excellent home for composting red worms and the heterotrophic bacteria needed to break
down the solid waste from the fish.
5. Nutrients ( supplementation) Hydroponic gardeners live and die by their nutrients, and
the supplements to those nutrients. Not so with aquaponic gardeners. The goal of an
aquaponic garden is to achieve a state of balance within its ecosystem. Everything that goes

into the system must work towards this end goal, and not harm any other element of the
system. Anything added to the system to boost plant growth could, and probably will, harm the
fish and possibly the bacteria colony and the compost worms. There are a few exceptions to
this, including the use ofliquid seaweed, small amounts of chelated iron, and a few minerals to
adjust pH. But beyond those, aquaponic gardeners will think long and hard before adding
anything to their systems except of course, fish feed.
6. Nutrients (dumping) Hydroponic nutrients must be dumped and replaced on a regular
basis to address nutrient imbalances that arise over time. This concept mystifies an aquaponic
gardener. We only top up the fish tank with water and never dump and replace it unless there
is a severe, unexpected problem. Why on earth would you get rid of all that beautiful fish
waste?, the aquaponic gardener would query. The notion of nutrient imbalance is as foreign
to an aquaponic gardener as it is to an organic soil gardener. Just as with healthy soil, a
healthy aquaponics system just keeps getting better and better the longer it operates.
7.

8.

Plant disease When I oversaw the plant grow lab at AeroGrow, we were constantly
worried about disease. We sterilized anything that ever came into contact with the plants, their
roots or the nutrient solution. The disease we feared the most was a fungus called pythium, or
root rot, which is widely considered the scourge of hydroponics. Fortunately, pythium is
almost non-existent in aquaponics. Researchers in Australia are currently studying why this is
so, but my money is on all the bacteria and other living organisms in an aquaponics system.
Logically they would help boost immunity; just as bacteria helps boost our own bodys
immunity. Hydroponics is more of a boy in the bubble by comparison. In addition, the very
high oxygen levels in an aquaponics system and the activity of the composting worms to clean
up dead plant matter probably both help mitigate disease outbreaks.
Temperature An important part of an effective program to prevent pythium outbreaks in

hydroponics is to make sure that

the nutrient solution doesnt get above 70
degrees F. Warm water is a perfect breeding ground for fungus, so keeping the water
temperature below optimal breeding conditions for pythium makes sense. In aquaponics,
however, the primary drivers of temperature are the requirements of the fish. The most widely
used fish in North American aquaponics, after goldfish, are tilapia, and tilapia does best in
water that is between 82 degrees and 86 degrees. The bacterium that drives the system is
also happiest in that temperature range. Fortunately, because pythium is so rare in
aquaponics this isnt an issue. The plants dont seem to mind either, as a 2005 report by Dr.
Nick Savidov at the Crop Diversification Center in Alberta, Canada showed, aquaponics is
every bit as effective at growing plants as hydroponics.
9. pH Optimal pH in a hydroponics system is 5.5 to 6.0. In aquaponics, pH is another factor
that is compromised between the plants, fish and bacteria. Optimal pH is 6.8 7.0, which is
again more closely related to what an organic soil gardener would target.

10. EC Along with pH and water temperature, EC is the other measure that is closely tracked
in hydroponics. EC, or Electrical Conductivity, is a measurement of the salts in the nutrient
reservoir, which tells the hydroponic gardener how concentrated the nutrient solution is. This
works because hydroponic nutrients are generally delivered in mineral salt form. Aquaponic
plants, on the other hand, are fed by the organic waste from the fish, which has very little
salts. EC is therefore not a useful measurement for the concentration of nutrients in an
aquaponics system. Aquaponics requires confidence in Mother Nature, rather than a managed
system requiring intense control. Once a system has been constructed using a set of
generally accepted Rules of Thumb and has been fully cycled (ammonia and nitrite levels
have dropped to zero), the only measures an aquaponic gardener monitors are temperature,
pH, and nitrates. If nitrates are low (close to zero), more fish should be added to the system. If
nitrates are high (above 50) more grow beds and/or plants should be added. Its as simple as
that.
11. Insect control Youve probably guessed by now that because aquaponics is an organic
system that uses fish, special care needs to be taken with regard to insect control. Even
commonly used organic sprays such as insecticidal soap or neem oil could be harmful if oversprayed into the fish tank. On the plus side, however, you can engage your fish in your insect
control efforts. If I have an insect problem on a small plant, such as young peppers or salad
greens, Ill remove them from the grow bed and let them soak in the fish tank for up to an
hour. The bugs eventually loosen their grip on the plant and become fish food. And if you are
lucky, the fish may even accelerate the process by nibbling the bugs directly off your plants. I
also know of people who have even hung Bug Zappers over their fish tank as an additional
form of feed for their fish.
12. Eco-system!! Hydroponics is a system for growing plants under highly optimized
conditions. Aquaponics creates a complete eco-system in which various living creatures all
interact to create a symbiotic whole. We use worms, liquid seaweed and beneficial insects as
team members, each with jobs to perform rather than trying to isolate the plants and nutrients
into single, definable, segregated components. Aquaponics is, above all else, an ecosystem
where plants, fish, bacteria, and worms all live together in a beautifully balanced symbiotic
relationship.