What is Aquaponics?

Aquaponics is a food production system that combines aquaculture (raising fish in tanks) and hydroponics (growing plants without soil).

Aquaponics is a truly sustainable food production system:

Aquaponics has minimal water consumption: less than 1% of the water than traditional farming.
Aquaponics is low Energy: uses 70% less energy than farming using in-ground methods!
Aquaponics has eight to ten times more vegetable production than farming in the dirt.
Aquaponics is fully scalable: backyard family systems to full commercial systems.
Aquaponics is pure, clean, and natural: USDA Certified Organic.
Aquaponics is easy to learn and operate: anyone can do this!

Aquaponics has been around for a long time. Many unsuccessful things were tried over and over because someone didn't do their research. Many new aquaponicists, being more excited than cautious, put fish in a pond and vegetables in gravel beds and wonder why they are having trouble with algal blooms, clogged gravel, and stunted or dying fish. Many aren't aware of the large existing body of knowledge surrounding aquaponics, and think they're the first to discover combining plants and fish, even though "their" aquaponics system was invented twenty years ago by a college student somewhere.

As a result of these sloppy procedures, much of what is labeled "aquaponics" bears a closer look to determine what category it fits into. We've done our best with this website to help you to see clearly into the sometimes murky new science of Aquaponics. Please see our FAQ for more on how to determine if the person telling you about this food production system really knows what they're talking about.

Aquaponics has the potential to feed a whole lot of people with energy-efficient, sustainable food-production methods. We think a lot of this will be done by individuals and families with backyard aquaponics systems. As these systems become more economical and efficient, backyard systems will become more common until every neighborhood has one. This will put tremendous power back into the hands of individuals, as they become more and more responsible for their own food security and head toward what we refer to as "food freedom". Thank you for your interest in this technology; it is our honor to share it with you.

Our commitment in Aquaponics is to:

1. Share our knowledge and this technology as broadly as possible.

2. Develop new and profitable aquaponics applications and technology to share.

3. Put ourselves out of the knowledge-sharing business as soon as we can. As soon as this is household knowledge, we've done our job.

What is "food freedom"?

Benefits to the Aquaculturist

Benefits to the Hydroponic Grower