Aquaponics: Why & How It Works!

somebody has been sticking their hands in the cookie jar what do I mean by that somebody has been eaten more fish than can be supplied in the ocean and that somebody is you and I listen the fish in the ocean can no longer sustain the human demand for fish what that means is the fish are not reproducing fast enough to meet the rate that we're snatching them out of there in the ocean so the oceans are being depleted of fish that means we have a problem this is not a small thing ladies and gentlemen this is a huge problem we have a problem and luckily there's been people that have been considering this problem for some time in the 1970s this is when we began building recirculating aquaculture systems now I want you to just ignore this bed here of plants these beautiful lush green plants we're gonna ignore these for a second ignore these and focus on what we have going on back here this is a recirculating aquaculture system it which means we grow fish or we raise fish in a confined area at much higher densities than when you can get in a natural environment so we raise fish stock a very densely they grow in this can in this recirculating system and we reuse the water this is super sustainable super sustainable dr. Timmons and doctor Ebeling they say that these systems can save up to 90 99 percent of the water that we use in traditional fish farming this is huge huge huge especially for you guys in California especially for you guys y'all always got a drought you guys stay in a drought so you guys need something like this you guys need these recirculating systems so let me show you exactly some of the components that are on this real quick this is the fish tank obviously where we raised the fish then we have a filter here where we process the fish waste and then we also process the nitrogen that builds up in these systems and we'll talk about that more in depth on a later time so we have the filters here we also have a sump tank and we also have a pump that obviously it circulates the water it's what moves all the water now these systems here are a key ingredient to the fish production for the future we cannot rely on the ocean because we keep eating more than what the ocean can supply is to many people these are the key these systems here are the key now while they are the key there's still a problem the problem is is that the nutrient content in these systems build up rapidly because we've reused the water so it builds up rapidly to a point where the fish are no longer able to survive so we have to do something about this we cannot grow fish in an environment where they can't survive so in order to have these systems produced efficiently we have to discharge the water back into the environment and this my friend is not a good thing it's not a good thing high nutrient concentrated water discharged out into the environment if it leeches into lakes it brings an imbalance in the system in the ecosystem it tears up ecosystems so we don't want this to happen so what do we do we said hold on we have us a little friend called hydroponics hydroponics is growing these types of vegetables your leafy greens in water without soil let me say it again you're growing vegetables in water without soil some of you guys may be like how is that possible this man that lost his mind listen I thought the same thing when I saw it you tell me you mean to tell me you can grow vegetables without soil ah I don't want to hear that look I gotta keep I gotta really investigate into this yes ladies and gentleman you can grow vegetables without soil soil is only required it's only there as a medium to anchor the plants the vegetables don't want the soil they want the minerals in the soil that's what they want and what humans what we found out is that we're able to mine these same nutrients and we're able to take them in there in a mineral form and dissolve them into the water and the plants take those up just the same way they take up the nutrients in the soil the plants don't care what it is long as they get their nitrogen their magnesium their phosphorus their potassium manganese baro and the rest of the other macro and micronutrients they don't care where it comes from give it to me give it to me give it to me so they what they do is when we have our wastewater here which would otherwise be dis discharged out we say we know that these plants here can grow with nutrients and the fish feed that we supply in here supplies the nutrients the exact nutrias required for plant development how the heck does this end up happening how does it end up happening how this is amazing when I first heard about this this is absolutely amazing man amazing so what we do is we take these recirculating aquaculture setup setups the nutrient concentration builds up we can supply the plants with the nutrients that would otherwise become toxic to the fish we supply it to the plants to plant to remove them they remove them from the system from the water and then we send it back boom to the fish tank fresh and so clean do you understand me this is nature at its finest with a little bit of human intervention whoa I'm telling you right now these things work amazing so let's go through this one more time I want you to get the understanding of what exactly is going on boom we have recirculating aquaculture just picture this being here ignore this recirculating aquaculture behind us we have the fish tank here where we grow our fish at high densities because that's the reason why we grow them in here we don't grow them here to put two or three fish in here we're going in here for high density so we can grow fish because the ocean can't keep up so we grow them in here in these tanks boom we have a filter here that filters out waste and it processes ammonia turns it into a less toxic version of nitrogen known as nitrate that's the end product of the nitrification process boom we have a water pump that pumps and controls where the water flows goes so we have nutrients being dispersed everywhere from the fish tank over to the plant production area and everybody's getting it in everybody that the fish is going in the circle the fish all the way to the high to the hydroponic component going everyone's getting it in everyone's getting it in the fish give the nutrients the plants take up the nutrients that would otherwise become toxic to the fish they remove it and they filter it out and it keeps going on and on and on and on and we don't have to discharge any water whoa whoo whoo that is some phenomenal stuff right there this is why I'm so pumped about it there's nothing else like it this is aquaponics ladies and gentlemen and this is how it really works and when you understand it from this perspective when you understand it that it's a recirculating aquaculture system first with this as the byproduct then it'll be very easy for you to understand exactly how to properly work this thing and how it works in theory as well so everyone needs food so everyone needs to know how to grow everyone and this just makes it so easy oh my it just makes it so easy I don't want to grow vegetables in the dirt I'm gonna tell you right now I don't want to go in the dirt back-breaking I don't have time for that I need something where I could just use my mind do a few things and let the rest you know take its course I don't want to be out there shoveling and do it I don't want to do that that's not what I want to do but this right here no-brainer right here all the little kids you high school young younger young uns you college young uns you guys should be jumping into this this is made just for you guys perfectly you guys like to get all into the technology this is here for you so this is aquaponics ladies and gentlemen [Music] [Applause] [Music]