Unfortunately the banks were not interested in lending without a large deposit and the interest rates were beyond belief, therefore we feel so passionate about aquaponics and growing food naturally we weren't going to let a few bankers stop us from creating something special which will employ people and provide the local community with tasty crops all year round.

Normally it's not intensive farming and it certainly will not be the way we will farm, however there are ways to make aquaponics a type of intensive farming.  The reason we will not be doing this is we believe it reduces the flavour and quality of the crops and therefore we will not be doing any intensive aquaponic farming.

We are looking to use fresh water trout as people would prefer to eat trout rather than Tilapia which to be honest as just as nice.

Mmh, organic usually refers to crops grown in soil and "organic" is a type of product labelling so legally we can't say it's organic, however the only thing we can say legally at the moment is we only use natural products....so you decide if that makes it organic.  We know what we think :-)

The key to a successful aquaponic system is the beneficial bacteria which convert the fish wastes into nutrients that the plant use.  More than 50% of the waste produced by fish is in the form of ammonia, secreted through the gills and in the urine. The remainder of the waste, excreted as faecal matter, this undergoes a process called mineralization which occurs when heterotrophic bacteria consume fish waste, decaying plant matter and uneaten food, converting all three to ammonia & other compounds. In sufficient quantities ammonia is toxic to plants and fish. Nitrifying bacteria, which naturally live in the soil, water and air, converts ammonia first to a nitrite and then to nitrates which plants consume. In our aquaponic system the nitrifying bacteria will thrive in the gravel in the fish tanks and in the growing medium in the grow beds. The plants readily uptake the nitrate in the water and, in consuming it, help to keep the water quality safe for the fish.

Our produce tastes better, everything in the system is natural otherwise it will kill the fish and plants. It uses much less water that conventional farming and our crops are not in soil which means they are not prone to soil born diseases.