Thanks for you reply.
As per the contents/research we have done so far and also based on the our current feasibility (interms of Land, Water, Soil, project budget). We felt Aquaponics would be a suitable & sustainable model depending how well we setup it and manage/run it.
Here are few things (advantages) we found/collected/read on the web and also interacting with few people:
- Significant reduction in the usage of water (compared to traditional soil methods of growing plants) as all water is recycled through the system and it is not necessary to discard or change any water (under normal conditions).
- There is no need to use artificial fertilizer to feed the plants. In the perfect system this is probably true though some aquaponics owners add “supplements” such as iron to their system to compensate for non-ideal environments (e.g. high pH systems). Fertilizer in the traditional sense is not used and indeed using fertilizer would likely harm or kill the fish. So there is probably a real cost saving over soil gardening in this area as there is no need to be improve soil before planting or during plant growth.
- Significant reduction in land is required to grow the same crops as traditional soil methods. I believe this is true though again I haven’t seen concrete evidence to support this claim. As water and nutrients are constantly provided it should be possible to grow plants close together with the main requirements for spacing being access to light.
- It’s organic.
- You grow Fish and also Crop. If we tap into right market, we felt that we can make good revenue out of both Fish and Crop.
- It can be setup on roof tops/backyards and you can grow crops for family consumption. So this would enable us to understand the system properly and further research on it.
- We are primarily working professionals and we wanted to explore options in Agriculture. As we stay in Bangalore we thought of setting up a farm (might be a organic/green house) in the outskirts. But i heard and feel that setting up the farm (might be a organic/green house) is bit of costly affair and keep in mind that we are totally newbies we restrained from it.
- We have a small (2400 sq feet) in the outskirts of bangalore, were we are planning to setup a aquaponic farm, so that we can visit the farm frequently rather then restrict only on weekends.
Here are few things that i could share… As i said we are totally newbies and trying our hands on this for the first time.
- Nirmal