Agri Kultuur August / Augustus 2018 | Page 15

on the scales of fish etc. There is no way to avoid them. Because they are such an integral part of life, we often forget about them and take them for granted. Hypothetical an absence of microbes will lead to ammonia accumulation. Perhaps the most obvious result of no microbes would be fish death from ammonia accumulation. As fish metabolize and perform their basic physical functions, they are producing ammonia. In fact, most animals produce ammonia at some point during their physical processes. Mammals convert ammonia to urea and get rid of it in urine, but fish do not. Instead, it passively seeps through their cells through a diffusion gradient. This means that ammonia molecules travel from an area of higher concentration (inside the fish) to an area of lower concentration (outside the fish, in the water). Without the microbes there to break it down, almost all the ammonia from the fish sticks around, until finally, there is as much ammonia outside the fish as there is inside the fish. At this point, the diffusion gradient (high concentration to low concentration) no AgriKultuur |AgriCulture longer exists. The ammonia inside the fish will not diffuse out because the concentration inside and outside are the same. Without the different concentrations, the fish dies, poisoned by its own ammonia. Another thing that would happen is that your plants would be deficient in almost everything. For almost every nutrient there is a transition that happens (a biological mediation) that takes the nutrient from being an organic solid to being something that the plants can absorb. For example, in fish feed there is a lot of phosphate, but that phosphate is not available to the plant as it exists in the feed, a microbe takes it and breaks it down, changing it into something usable. We rely on microbes to make nutrients available to plants. And that goes for almost any system in the world. We need microbes to be part of our systems as much as we need fish and plants and water. Microbial diversity Although the actual science of Aquaponics is still in the early stages of its development, the biochemical cycle within it, cycling within the system, is quite well understood. 15