New Aquaponics

New+Aquaponics

Throughout recent years, the Derry Area agriculture department has employed a new aquaponics system in order to keep the establishment working as efficiently as possible. Aquaponics combines multiple factions of greenhouse and agricultural culture in order to provide an efficient system that keeps the community running. Primarily, fish and hydroponic plant ecosystems are combined, letting them grow and coexist as one.

In simple terms, the fish waste provides nutrients for the plants, and the plants naturally clean the water to maintain the quality for the fish. The correspondence between the fish and plants is an example of mutualism, a type of relationship between organisms where both parties benefit one another, though this particular situation includes artificial interference. An aquaponics system is easy to set up and maintain, and professional systems can provide fresh fish and vegetables from a clean, healthy environment year-round.

That being said, it’s not perfect. There are someĀ  downsides to an exclusively aquaponics system. Environments such as this can be potentially costly to maintain, and they consume a lot of electricity. Further, there are only certain plants and fish that are able to thrive within the system subtype. No system is flawless, though, and these pros seem to outweigh the cons.

Perfecting greenhouse production is not completely attainable yet, but this seems to be a step in the right direction.