Revolution farms for your sustainable future, grow fresh!

How it Works

In short, aquaponics is a system of growing fish and plants (vegetables and small fruits) together. The fish waste is a nutrient-rich fertilizer which nourishes the plants, while the plants cleanse the water that is circulated back the fish. In a controlled environment such as a greenhouse, the efficiency of solar-thermal energy is maximized, and nutrients in the system are utilized most effectively in order to harvest the highest amount of vegetables and fish protein from the system, without jeopardizing the nutritional value and quality.

The term aquaponics is a portmanteau , a combination of the words aquaculture and hydroponics. Aquaculture is the cultivation of fish or other water-based animals, and hydroponics is where plants are grown in sterile medium or completely in water.

Simplified Example Layout of a 6ft x 8ft unit.

By combining the fish, water and plants, Portable Farms^TM uses an integrated environment to produce vegetables and fish in very small spaces, using very little water. The Portable Farm^TM system is a packaged solution that echoes processes found in nature.
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FAQ: Can the system work without fish?
Yes, but the system would then be considered hydroponics, which is far less superior in comparison to aquaponics. We will not separate the fish from the system for this reason. Many people are choosing to grow Koi for pets. SEE ALL FAQs

Brief History

Aquaponics has its roots in ancient Egyptian, Aztec and Asian cultures. Advances in aquaponics were developed in areas of the world where high concentrations of people lived who were observant of the relationships that existed naturally in their environment.

In China, farmers know that land livestock waste could be added to their fields or ponds to increase production of vegetables and fruit bearing plants. They also noticed that different fish had different tolerances to the level of land-animal waste in their water. For example too much pig or chicken waste caused many fish to die (the modern explanation for this is lack of oxygen) so they were careful about balancing their system for maximum yield and minimum fish loss.

These Chinese farmers were able to refine their systems so they could grow chickens in pens above pigs, (with the waste dropping through along with any spilled food) who were in a pen over a pond with carp in it, and then the water flowed to another pond with other less tolerant fish such as catfish and perhaps other aquatic animals and certainly other water plants were grown and harvested. These systems were so called flow-through systems, meaning that water was used once through the ponds, and then released to the local paddies, streams, lakes or ocean. The sludge from the bottom of the ponds was used on the fields and some of the water was used in the paddies for fertilizer before it was released.

Contemporary Aquaponics

Portable Farms^TM is contemporary aquaponics, and is usually a closed loop system that requires the input of some energy. This energy includes both fish food and some electricity, which can be solar, to pump the air and water for the continual flow of nutrients from the fish to the produce.

Our system duplicates what nature has been doing for millions of years. The fish waste is gradually flowed through the plant-root area where it is absorbed and used by the plants. The water then flows back to the fish tank adding some oxygen along the way to collect some more nutrients. Then the cycle is repeated. Portable Farms^TM uses a one hour, twice a day cycle, to circulate water through the system. The settling tank contents are emptied on a weekly basis and the 10 to 20 gallons of nutrient-rich "waste" water is drained out to nourish shrubs and ornamentals in your back yard.

Colle Davis, the inventor of the Portable Farm^TM, majored in the field of Renewable Natural Resources in 1972, at the University of California at Davis, and he's been refining Portable Farms^TM for the past 37 years. This new system made it possible to fully automate the farm using all his own unique engineering, so that anyone, anywhere, could raise their own food.

Portable Farms^TM has been through many, many iterations and improvements over the years, and Colle and his wife, Phyllis, have three Portable Farms^TM on their small two-acre farm near the Pacific Ocean, in Escondido, California. Year round they enjoy all the organic table vegetables, berries, tomatoes, and fish they can possibly eat with surplus to feed 50 people daily vegetables and one serving of fish per week, per person, for an entire year. With their three Portable Farms^TM (sizes: 6' x 8', 10' x 20' and 20' x 30') they grow a total of 5,100 vegetables and 1,650 pounds of home-grown fish in one year.

Because of unsure economic markets in the US and globally, the Portable Farm^TM is perfectly designed for back yard installations, community gardens, prisons, schools, churches, orphanages, missions, military installations, refugee camps, isolated villages, draught stricken areas, and areas recovering from natural disasters. The food can be eaten or sold to others. Even in his own part of the world, Southern California, Colle Davis is committed to teaching people to become more self sufficient and showing them how to feed themselves, and using the surplus from their efforts to provide extra income for themselves and their families.