Ancient
Aquaponics has ancient roots, although there is some debate on its first occurrence:
- Aztec cultivated agricultural islands known as chinampas and are considered by some as the first form of aquaponics for agricultural use where plants were raised on stationary (and sometime movable) islands in lake shallows and waste materials dredged from the Chinampa canals and
- surrounding cities are used to manually irrigate the plants. 3]
- South China and Thailand who cultivated and farmed rice in paddy fields in combination with fish are cited as examples of early aquaponics. These polycultural farming systems existed in many Far Eastern countries and raised fish such as the oriental loach (泥鳅, ドジョウ), swamp eel (黄鳝, 田鰻), Common (鯉魚, コイ) and crucian carp (鯽魚) as well as pond snails (田螺) ]
