Afraponix

We're days away from launching our training AQUA, filmed straight from the fish house, where rainbow trout and tilapia are farmed side by side on one structure: filtration, air and water flow, all working together. It's the first time we've run this course, built around how to actually design and structure a commercial system that works.

In AQUA, you'll learn how to design and manage a fish house like this one — stocking density, quarantine, rotation, handling, all of it.

📅 Starts Tuesday, September 1 — only 10 seats left

🔗 Register: https://afraponix.com/enrol/aqua/

Take a look inside our newest project, Mos M Farms in the Free State — a hydroponic facility 🌱

10,000 seedlings in the seedling bay. A heat pump holding root-zone water temperature steady around the clock. Four nutrient tanks — A, B, C and D — mixed and balanced automatically by computer, pH locked at 5.7. Even the airflow is engineered, with fresh air pulled in and pushed out above the canopy to keep oxygen and CO2 cycling right.

This is what "engineered, not improvised" looks like on the ground.

Want to know what a system like this could look like on your site? Book a consultation — link in the comments.

Most aquaponics farms don't fail because of bad luck. They fail because the system was designed without the climate, the location, or the market in mind. Fix the foundation, and everything else gets easier to run.

We built the AQUA Programme, a brand new 3 week agribusiness focused course with live sessions led by Justin Hess, to help you avoid that exact mistake, starting September 1st.

R3,999 ZAR R̶4̶,̶9̶9̶9̶ Save R1,000 · Limited time

👉 Save your spot here: https://afraponix.com/training/

Four weeks. That's it. All of it grown in four weeks, in an aquaponics system, with no soil.

Quick check-in on the grow beds this week: the lettuce is ready and we're already eating it daily, the next batch is a few days behind, and the cauliflower and broccoli heads are just starting to form. The kale has gone absolutely wild.

Want to learn how to do this at home? Here's everything you need to know:

📅 Starts Tuesday 4 August
4 live sessions × 2 hours — Tuesday & Thursday evenings, over 2 weeks
🎙 Live with Justin Hess & Mark Austin— Q&A in every session

🌍 Join from anywhere — lifetime access to all recordings
Full success manual + certificate of completion
Foundation level — no experience needed

💸 Early-bird price of R1,499 (normally R1,900) ends 31 July.

👉 Register: https://aquaponics.africa/training/aquaponics-101/

How do I know how much air my plants and fish need?

It's the question that quietly decides whether your system thrives or crashes.

Too little aeration and your fish gasp at the surface, your biofilter stalls, and your roots go brown and slimy. Too much and you're burning electricity for nothing. Most beginners guess — and then blame the wrong thing when something goes wrong.

In this free live webinar we break down exactly how to size aeration for your fish, your plants and your biofilter — and how to tell, at a glance, whether your system is getting enough.

🎙️ FREE LIVE WEBINAR
Thursday 30 July 2026
5:00 PM (South Africa time)

💻 Live online — bring your questions

Seats are limited and it's happening this week.

👉 Register Here → https://aquaponics.africa/webinar-aeration/

Inside a working aquaponics system at Lighthouse School, Mauritius 🇲🇺

We were on the ground running a training course and had to show you what these guys have built: fish tank → mechanical filter → biofilter → flood-and-drain media beds → deep water culture, all running as one system.

And the harvest? Cucumbers, lettuce, herbs and pak choi going straight into the school kitchen — with the surplus sold to parents. Real nutrition on kids' plates, grown metres from where they learn.

Want to build something like this? Start here 👇

AQUAPONICS 101 — ONLINE
📅 First session: 4 August
4 live sessions × 2 hours | Tuesday–Thursday evenings | over 2 weeks

📚 Foundational principles • water chemistry • fish & plant biology • small-scale system design
Perfect for hobbyists and complete beginners — no experience needed

👉 Book your seat: https://aquaponics.africa/training/

⚙️ Real talk: filtration is the part of aquaponics nobody gets excited about, but it's the part that makes or breaks your system. Let's break it down.

Here is how it works:

Mechanical filtration comes first. Fish produce waste constantly, and that solid waste must be removed before it reaches your plants. If it gets through, it clogs the roots and blocks nutrient uptake. A brush or mechanical screen traps those solids and keeps them out of the growing system.

Biological filtration comes second. This is where the nitrogen cycle happens. Beneficial bacteria colonise a filtration media and convert ammonia from fish waste into nitrate, which plants can absorb. In this system, a matala mat with hundreds of kilometres of strand surface provides the ideal home for those bacteria. What exits the biological filter is clean, plant-ready water.

And the solid waste that gets removed mechanically? It is not thrown away. Once a week, that waste is moved into a separate vessel, aerated and allowed to break down. The result is a mineralised liquid that provides additional nutrients for plants.

The filter is the heartbeat of your aquaponics system. A good one makes the difference between a system that works and one that struggles.

Filtration, the nitrogen cycle and water quality management are all covered in our Aquaponics 101 training.

Our Aquaponics 101 training covers 7 topics across 4 live sessions:
1. Aquaponics fundamentals and system types
2. The nitrogen cycle
3. System setup and cycling
4. Fish selection and basic husbandry
5. Plant selection and nutrition basics
6. Daily maintenance routines
7. Troubleshooting and common issues

💻 100% online · 4 live sessions · 1 week · All recordings included
💰 Early Bird: R1,099 (save R400, sign up before 21 July) · Regular: R1,499
📅 Starts 3 August 2026 (Monday)

🔗 Learn more and register for our Aquaponics 101 training, link in bio:
https://aquaponics.africa/training/

🌿 In aquaponics, aeration is not just about your fish. Your plants need it too.

In a deep water culture system, plant roots float directly in water. For those roots to absorb nutrients efficiently, the water around them needs to be oxygenated. The way to do that is with a diffuser tube running below the floating boards, producing a stream of fine air bubbles at the root zone.

The question is: how much air?

After years of aquaponic farming, Justin Hess from Afraponix has worked out the optimum rate: 3 litres of air per minute per square metre of deep water culture.

For 10 m² of DWC growing area, that means a 30 litre per minute air pump. And because DWC systems are shallow, water pressure has very little effect on airflow, so the pump delivers almost exactly what its spec sheet says.

System design, plant nutrition and aeration are all covered in our Aquaponics 101 training.

Our Aquaponics 101 training covers 7 topics across 4 live sessions:
1. Aquaponics fundamentals and system types
2. The nitrogen cycle
3. System setup and cycling
4. Fish selection and basic husbandry
5. Plant selection and nutrition basics
6. Daily maintenance routines
7. Troubleshooting and common issues

💻 100% online · 4 live sessions · 1 week · All recordings included
💰 Early Bird: R1,500 · Regular: R1,900
📅 Starts 6 July 2026

🔗 Learn more and register for our Aquaponics 101 training, link in bio:
https://aquaponics.africa/training/

In this video I talk about why getting an Afraponix farm is really worth it.