Information - Applications
Aquaponics for Schools
The aquaponics greenhouse is effectively a microcosm, it’s a self contained, closed loop system where everything is recycled; from energy, to nutrients and also water. Aquaponics is a very visually attractive and intriguing concept, the integration of fish and plants combined with the calming noise of moving water makes for a captivating and productive learning experience.
Aquaponics has been proven to be a practical and hands on approach to learning with every element of our planet’s function being displayed, from the microscopic bacterial level right up to the “greenhouse effect”. Another huge advantage is that food is both produced and eaten by the students themselves, they can associate with and value its production. In terms of food miles, its more a case of food meters!
See-through tank windows, simplified information boards and a set in a user friendly environment makes for a truly engaging learning experience tackling so many fundamental issues. Our aquaponics systems are also designed to be able to engage students and their schools in a national research programme, either through the greenhouse controls systems or manually to monitor production, energy efficiency and climate data. We can also tailor the construction schedule to involve students and staff if required and as was the case with the ABLE project and the ABLE to Build initiative.
Aquaponics as a Business
Providing you're realistic about both the benefits and constraints of aquaponics, then it has the proven potential to provide a profitable and sustainable business. The core concept of aquaponics is rooted in the fact that they are productive and diverse in their outputs, food can be produced locally, year round and with consistent cropping. Therefore supplying a variety of crops such as fresh herbs, salad crops, fresh fish and fruit crops to a relatively small number of localised restaurants, shops, box schemes and end consumers, allows the system to maintain consistent production of high value crops linked to a network of established outlets.
Aquaponics can't compete on a wholesale level either with commercial hydroponics, or with intensive aquaculture, but aquaponics fulfils a niche market of provenance, accountability and sustainable food production, produced consistently and locally.
Aquaponics for your Community
Like many community gardening and food production schemes where people are bought together to share space, time and skills, the aquaponics system provide a resource with wide reaching implications and benefits.
Aquaponics, using fish and plants grown in balance, provides a really captivating element for young people to get involved with food and its production.
Our goal is to help integrate aquaponics into communities as sustainably as possible and as such facilitate the community and local schools/colleges to be involved in the project from conception to harvest, including construction, set up, and the subsequent running of the system.
We also provide advice and support for the submission of grant funding applications to help get aquaponics into your community.
Aquaponics for your Family
Producing food at home not only makes great economical sense but it also helps engage the family in the linkages between nature, food and our shared environment.
Everyone knows a crop always tastes sweeter if you’ve grown it yourself, but getting the whole family involved in feeding and looking after the fish as well as planting and harvesting the crops is a valuable and hands on approach to learning and understanding both our ecosystem and where our food comes from.
At Aquaponics UK we supply a range of different scaled complete aquaponics systems designed for your back garden or greenhouse. We also provide advice on how best to get started whether it be a “Heath Robinson” type approach or providing a ready to fill complete system.
Applications | Methods | Crops