1. Introduction
Aquaculture is the culture of aquatic organisms, commonly referred as animals, in a designated water body. The water needs to be treated whenever toxicants in it have built up beyond animal’s safe level. Toxicants such as ammonia and nitrite are derived from decomposition of unconsumed feed and metabolites or waste of the animals. Hydroponics is the culture of aquatic plants in soilless water where nutrients for plant’s growth come entirely from a formulated fertilizer. Aquaponics (a portmanteau of the terms aquaculture and hydroponics) integrates aquaculture and hydroponics into a common closed-loop eco-culture where a symbiotic relationship is created in which water and nutrients are recirculated and reused, concomitantly fully utilized and conserved. In aquaponics system, waste organic matters from aquaculture system, which can become toxic to animals, are converted by microbes into soluble nutrients for the plants and simultaneously, hydroponics system has already treated the water and recirculates back
to aquaculture systemwith cleansed and safewater for the animals.Besides its ecological merits, aquaponics system can obtain extra economic advantages: saving cost (input) on water treatment for aquaculture system, saving another cost on formulated fertilizer for hydroponics system and benefit from double outputs, harvest of animal and plant, by a single input, fish feed.