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History Phish - Max

The history of aquaponics began thousands of years ago with ancient cultures developing early aquaponic systems. The earliest known example was developed by the Maya around 1000 AD, which involved raising plants on rafts floating on lakes, using nutrient-rich water and mud from canals to fertilize the plants. Similarly, Asian cultures like in parts of China, Thailand and Indonesia cultivated rice in fields with integrated fish that provided nutrients. Modern aquaponics systems aimed to make fish and plant farming more efficient by recycling water and nutrients in a closed recirculating system, though this carries increased risks of disease requiring antibiotic use.

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236 views3 pages

History Phish - Max

The history of aquaponics began thousands of years ago with ancient cultures developing early aquaponic systems. The earliest known example was developed by the Maya around 1000 AD, which involved raising plants on rafts floating on lakes, using nutrient-rich water and mud from canals to fertilize the plants. Similarly, Asian cultures like in parts of China, Thailand and Indonesia cultivated rice in fields with integrated fish that provided nutrients. Modern aquaponics systems aimed to make fish and plant farming more efficient by recycling water and nutrients in a closed recirculating system, though this carries increased risks of disease requiring antibiotic use.

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api-531980302
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History of Aquaponics

Maxwell Wood
History of aquaponics

The idea of combining fish and vegetable production into a symbiotic relationship has been

around for a very long time. Ancient cultures had their own versions of aquaponic systems. This

includes the chinampas of Mexico and the integrated rice paddy systems across parts of Asia.

The earliest example of an aquaponics system is the lowland Maya, followed by the Aztecs, who

raised plants on rafts on the surface of a lake in1,000 A.D. The Aztec’s floating agricultural

islands known as chinampas. It is considered to be the first form of aquaponics for agricultural

use. Chinampas are networks of canals and stationary rafts and floating islands where they

cultivated crops on the floating islands using nutrient-rich mud and water from the canals.

In the chinampa aquaponics system, plants were raised on stationary islands in shallow lakes.

Nutrient-rich mud/ fertilizer was transported into the lakes via the Chinampa canals and the

surrounding cities. These canals were then used to manually irrigate the plants on the chinampas.

Another early form of aquaponics can be found in south china, thailand, and indonesia,

where they’ve been cultivating rice in fields with fish in them. This counts as another form of

aquaponics. They also go by the name “polycultural farming systems”. They usually used fish

such as the oriental loach, swamp eel, common carp, and crucian carp. Along with pond snails,

these were the fish of choice in east asia while cultivating rice. They also used ducks. These

ducks were housed in cages over the ponds, the fish would then process the waste that dropped

down from the ducks, this waste would then feed the bigger fish in a sort of 2 stage system

making their aquaponics system for efficient. The bigger fish’s waste was then used to irrigate

the rice at the end of the system.


Modern aquaponics

The need for modern aquaponics systems came about due to fish farmers wanting to find

more efficient uses of their land while decreasing the use of resources, land, water, etc. Before

the introduction of modern aquaponics systems, fish were raised in large ponds, or kept in

artificial saltwater ponds netted off from bays and ocean. The modern system’s name is the

Recirculating Aquaculture System, also known as RAS. The benefits of the Recirculating

Aquaculture System is that for the same fish population, less water is needed. This is because the

Recirculating Aquaculture System can contain a fish population at a much denser rate. This also

means that a Recirculating Aquaculture System system takes up a lot less space than a traditional

pond system. However, there are tradeoffs. One more tradeoff is the high amount of waste-water

created from aquaponics systems. This requires a large amount of antibiotics to keep from

outbreaks of disease. The use of these antibiotics can have an impact on the local environment.

This is the tradeoff for more compact and efficient farming.

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