Dug and laid 5-15 cm under irrigation drip line, is an open half pipe with a concave net on it, which collects the water and leads it down to a central collection tank with fish in it. This is pumped up to a small constructed wetland, and lead back down via the irrigation pipes to water the fields. Plants are laid on the side of the irrigation pipe, so that rain continues to reach the aquifer, plants continue to grow naturally, but when water is scarce, the roots towards the irrigation path will take lead.
This simple invention brings water loss down to 1% (1 percent) of the original losses, if aquaponic growing method numbers and claims can be relied upon.
Irrigation dripping was invented by Israelis in the Sinai desert because the guy with the sprinklers didn't come on time. (As opposed to the cherry tomatoes invented by a religious Israeli looking for a system where vegetation was not grown in the ground, so as to be exempt from the Shemitta seventh year earth Sabbath).
Drip irrigation turned out to be a great idea, that saves a lot of water. This idea is the follow up.
So, by cleaning the water and circulating it to the fish, and then using the fish as fertilizer, the water is kept mostly in the system, and is used only for building of the plants (a small percentage) and lost to evaporation and to plant perspiration (another small percentage).
BUT, Aquaponics is done above and disconnected from the ground, and organic growing (probably having closer ties with nature, will be discovered to have other virtues as well) is not designated for aquaponics. Bringing the aquaponics to earth, will designate them as organic.
-- If I understand correctly, in the US you don't have to be connected with the ground for being confirmed as organic growing. Sill, I'm sure there will be good reasons discovered for growing on the ground, and this new system is too simple to be ignored.-- pashute, Jan 22 2012 Coastal_20City_20Wastewater_20Relocation [FlyingToaster, Feb 08 2012] There is a big difference between bringing water loss down to 1% (if you define "loss" as water not taken up by plants), and bringing water usage down to 1%. It seems implausible that any currently practiced system - even overhead sprinklers - uses 100 times as much water as that needed by the plants.
All of the elements of this - drainage channels beneath fields, drip-lines, and aquaponics - are baked. Various systems, soil and soil-less, involving lined channels or pits have also been widely practiced. Some of them could be considered in-ground, rather than above-ground, hydroponics or aquaponics.
Your particular system might be good in sand. In other soils, there is not the same problem of water being lost to below the root zone; likewise, little of the water would find its way into your channel, except in sand.-- spidermother, Jan 23 2012 I may be getting dumber in my old age, but I didn't follow this.
Is the idea to collect water soaking through the growing area and recycle it instead of letting it vanish into the ground?-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 23 2012 If it is, I have a simple version of it baked and operating at an undisclosed location in my spare room. I wanted to have the advantages of growing in an amended- soil medium along with the consistent operation and micro- managable qualities of my hydroponic setup, so I modified one of my deep-water culture systems to filter the nutrient solution through soil and drain into a remote reservoir. It works, but it isn't a major improvement over straight hydroponics. I think that's sort of what's being described here, only mine doesn't have any fish in it. Some of the components were purchased at a fish store, however.
As for organic growing, it doesn't even mean you have to use soil at all. Plenty of organic growers* use aquaponics, hydroponics, and aeroponics.
*On a side note, I'm amused at how many organic growing proponents seem to be totally ignorant of what the word actually means. In the '70s, my parents were members of an organic farming co-op; one of the other members raised a big stink one day when my mother was using sheets of black poly to bed her plot instead of clear poly, because the black poly contained "color additives." My mother calmly explained that the substance used to make the plastic black was carbon, which in fact made the black even more organic than the clear.-- Alterother, Jan 23 2012 Sand? Root zone? It's hydroponics.
Root zone was a good query, but I thought not well argued.
Tilapia &d Tomatoes! I envy you!
I dream almost every night how to make this work in the US desserts
I am pretty sure your idea is entirely baked by someone in northwest Houston.
It's not just being done here in Houston, it's being done all over the place.
You're incredibly smart to imagine it on your own.
Aquaculture.-- Zimmy, Feb 08 2012 Tilapia, hydroponics, etc. Apparently the concept is far more obscure than I had hoped.-- Zimmy, Feb 08 2012 [Z] You might like my treatment-plant effluent relocation idea <link>.-- FlyingToaster, Feb 08 2012 Zimmy, nobody uses the ground for aquaponics or hydroponics. Both use elevated systems DETACHED from the real mother earth.
The proposed system allows for both the rain and real earth minerals and bio agriculture, while enhancing it with a "side rail" of underground hydroponics, connected to fish (for the aquaponics part).
A "chicken tractor" could be used on it, something a regular hydroponics / aquaponics system couldn't dream of doing.-- pashute, Jun 30 2013 random, halfbakery