Business View Magazine | Volume 8, Issue 10

79 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 8, ISSUE 10 THE AQUAPONI CS ASSOC I AT ION incorporated in Colorado. It’s been a bumpy ride with some ebbs and flows. For the first seven years, it was a volunteer-run organization. By 2018, we’d had a successful conference two years in a row and were able to start compensating someone part-time to keep things moving. “Since then we’ve been getting more high- profile board members, more affiliate and general members. Our conferences have been growing in size, our social media following has increased, as well. We have about 250 total members throughout the world, around 200 are from the U.S. Thirty to forty are affiliate members that pay a bit more and have the opportunity to advertise their aquaponics goods and/or services on our website and our social media.” problems. Rather than dumping the fish waste, you’re using that for the hydroponics. An interesting thing about aquaponics is that you need a very healthy, large bacterial colony, which also helps to create a steady, stable water system. So for aquaponics growers, once you reach your balance and you know how many plants you have, how much your fish are eating every day, the water is able to stay relatively stable and the bacteria help to do that. It also improves plant health and is more a natural growing environment for plants than hydroponics, which is more sterile.” BVM: Can you share the backstory and evolution of the Aquaponics Association? Filipowich: “The Association was formed in 2011,