Hydroponics is better than Aquaponics?

jwhittak98

I was telling a mate how well my peeponics system is going, he told me that I should flush my system and put in some of his canna hydro nutrient and see the difference, I refused.
Is this a good idea to flush my system and go hydro? :brilsmurf:

Wildfire

lol peeponics isn't aquaponics its peeponics, I say flush your system and buy some fish.

arbe

Why wouldn't you chose Aquaponics over Hydroponics? You are replacing the chemical fertilizer with fish/fish food and can still grow some nice produce very quickly (plus you get to eat the fish).

I have also read that some Hydroponic systems require water changes to dilute the saturated fertilizer/nutrients which I consider a waste of precious water.

freoboy

Why would you ask this question on a aquaponics site? Of course we are going to say aquaponics is better

arbe

True Freoboy.

I will add to my comments above that my research started with Hydroponics before discovering Aquaponics. It just seemed like a much better and natural system.

mantis

Got hydroponic nutes and an autopot setup and dunno if I will even bother setting it up, which would take 30mins max. No point really

Mr Damage

...especially not an autopot system!

trout

jwhittak98 wrote:

I was telling a mate how well my peeponics system is going,

Peeponics, hydroponics, aquaponics..

Aquaponics=
Closed loop food production system. get vegetables and fish
Can't use insecticides/pesticides/fungicides hence can be a big problem.

Hydroponics=
Open loop vegetable/fruit production system. You need to dump water
on a regular basis but still efficient and you can use insecticides/pesticides/fungicides.

Peeponics=
Human urine absolutely fantastic, if you have a bacterial infection
then you transfer it to anybody that eats the vegetables. If you're on medication
you'll piss out the metabolites of that medication, but wait we don't test what the
metabolites do, so it becomes a totally unknown entity in your system.
Or women on HRT or the pill, you'll end up with an estrogen loaded system.
Why wouldn't you just buy a 500g box of urea ($4.95 at my nursery) and throw in
one teaspoonful every second day!

Quote:

A British researcher, John Sumpter, contributed to this discovery while studying fish living near a London wastewater treatment plant. He found male fish that were producing eggs. After he found the compound estradiol in the fish tissue, he concluded estrogens from birth control pills were part of the problem.

ref:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m ... _96195506/

jwhittak98

I am keen to get fish, however I would have to kill them when I move to tasmania in two months. What I want to ask is how often do people tell you that you should go hydro cause its better. When they have never done aquaponics?

junkie

jwhittak98 wrote:

What I want to ask is how often do people tell you that you should go hydro cause its better. When they have never done aquaponics?

Just smile and nod...

arbe

In that case I cant tell you that Aquaponics is better as I have never actually set up a Hydroponic system.

SolTun

Aquaponics=
Closed loop food production system. get vegetables and fish
Can't use insecticides/pesticides/fungicides hence can be a big problem.

I think your def. here is a bit narrow, did you read this?
Quote.: Aquaponics today can take on many
forms. Some commercial operations within
Australia don’t recirculate their water,
it’s used in their fish culture once, then
pumped though a hydroponic system,
before going out to waste.
Ref.: http://www.byapmagazine.com/BYAP_Magazine_Issue1.pdf

Or this ?
http://www.ca.uky.edu/wkrec/454fs.PDF

cheers

mantis

If you dont want to pee in it then charlie carp will get it rocking and probably a lot cheaper than hydroponic nutes

Charlie

No one has ever told mer that hydro is "better".

Personaly I rather a chemical free, eco friendly, water/power wise sytem that has the added bonus of fish.

What else is there to talk about? :dontknow:

TCLynx

People who insist that Hydroponics is better are usually the ones that are too impatient to actually cycle up an aquaponics system. See a normal chemical hydro system is never going to get any better then dump and replace the nutrient every few weeks and they often sterilize the system after each crop. They are used to tightly controlling every little thing and the plants are totally dependent on them.

In Aquaponics, the first season may be a bit rough since you might be starting out with a high pH and have some issues through cycle up so the plants are not playing super hero in their first several weeks but if you have a little patience the aquaponics system gets better and better with age and come the next season you have all the natural things in favor of aquaponics while the hydroponics is having to start fresh and sterile each crop.

As to pee ponics, it will be better than just urea seeing as pee will have more than just urea turning into ammonia to drive the nitrogen cycle. Pee has a fairly good cross section of all the nutrients and will tend to provide a fairly similar nutrient balance as aquaponics. The point about medications and pathogens is reasonable. If you seal the pee up in a bottle for several weeks the urea will convert into ammonia and kill off most of the bacteria that a reasonably healthy person might carry. As to the metabolites from medications, well don't kid yourself, there is no away, the planet re-cycles all liquids and you have a choice, you can do the re-cycling on your own property or you can flush it away with the rest of societies waste and pretend that it is some how being taken care of but the truth is it all goes back into the planet's water supplies.

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