Story: Growing Edible Fish and Food in Aquaponics
Episode: 10
Presenter: Neville Passmore
Air Date: 18th October 2025

Neville demonstrates growing edible fish and vegetables, fruit, and herbs in aquaponics.

• For about 20 years, Neville has been growing edible fish and vegetables, fruit, and herbs in aquaponics for about 20 years now and has successfully cultivated barramundi, trout, silver perch, and yabbies at home.
• Vertical garden systems are a real space saver. And this tiny pond pump is all you need to deliver the nutrient-rich water to the top bed, and gravity delivers this back into the pond.
• The ponds have a couple of hundred silver perch fingerlings, which are to be sold to home gardeners. These are all year-round fish that take around 12 months to get to plate size.
• Ornamental Goldfish are used in these other systems for demonstration purposes, and they also grow happily and provide nutrients for the vegetables. And no, we don’t eat the goldfish.
• Fish manure mixes with the water and is pumped up into the grow bed full of expanded clay. This sustains the fig and lime trees. The trees, in turn, take up the nutrients through their roots, making the water clean for the fish. A beautiful, circular, self-supporting growing system.