Growing Food Locally: Integrating Agriculture into the Built Environments
Enviromental Building News
February, Feb 01, 2009
By Alex Wilson
An excerpt from the article
In an aquaponic system, wastes produced by fish become beneficial fertilizer for hydroponically grown plants. According to Nelson and Pade, Inc., the leading North American firm involved with aquaponics (and publisher of Aquaponics Journal), ammonia-rich fish wastes are broken down by bacteria into nitrate—the form of nitrogen that plants use. This nutrient solution is used in a recirculating hydroponic system—most commonly raft hydroponics but occasionally NFT or Dutch bucket hydroponics. Due to the weight of fish tanks, aquaculture is rarely a rooftop enterprise, though it would be possible to locate the fish tanks at ground level with NFT hydroponics on the roof.