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