Hi,
I am curious about the way to handle diseases in an Aquaponics System. The point that I am interested in is how to isolate Aquaculture & Hydroponics from each other.
Upon isolation of the Aquaculture side, it is simply a RAS system. So while registering the necessary treatment does water needs to be recycled or feeding needs to be continued ?
Does The Sump must serve the hydroponics or the RAS part of the Aquaponics System or each one needs a sump of their own to manage both the systems properly ?
Best Regards
MMulayim
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What you are referring to is called decoupled aquaponics. And yes, you would use two sumps - water would be moved from aquaculture side to hydroponics side and would never return back to the aquaculture side. There are other benefits from this but it is quite a bit more complicated of a system to run…
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Thats what I heard, it being complicated. For this very reason I have designed a hybrid system which incorporates both coupled and decoupled systems. Lets say each system have 500 m² (6000 ft²) DWC and when needed be I can switch a couple of valves to have a 1000 m² (12000 ft²) decoupled DWC with its own sump and RAS have its own sump.
The point is there is not much literature regarding the management of such systems. I would appreciate if anyone know any reference to management of such systems or at least decoupled ones.
And there still isn’t much literature on mgmt of that type of system. It’s very unique to each systems setup, type and amount of plants, temp/humidity, etc. Too many variables involved to provide a reference for that unfortunately. Are you testing your water on regular basis and know how much you need to top off? Those are the first big factors that come into play when doing decoupled.
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Having the ability to couple and decouple the aquaculture and hydroponics system is pretty simple to design and I’ve been successful doing this with two sumps and two valves. (See The Aquaponic Source Designs.)
For management of these type of systems and aquaponic systems in general the best resources there out there is The Aquaponic Farm Management Plan. Specifically to your topic it has standard operating procedures for running a hybrid system (ability to decouple /couple)
https://regenaquaculture.com/crop-management/#The-Aquaponic-Farm-Management-Plan
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