Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

There might be some obvious reason that this isn't done, but couldn't wind power be used to pressurize a hydraulic tank and have the hydraulics running the pumps in an AP setup? Hopefully that way there would be less loss to conversion to electricity and back again.

I suppose the biggest reasons that wind is not the automatic method of powering aquaponics is that the wind does not always blow and not all locations are perfect for wind power.

I don't know much about hydraulic power. I do know they make windmills that can compress air to aerate ponds. They also make windmills that can pump water more or less directly. Issues with these are the fact that they stop working when the wind stops and you usually need towers for the windmill which are often not really acceptable in a residential neighborhood (especially where I live with hurricane codes.)

There have been threads where we talk about how to make a wind powered rope pump work for AP but they usually require a deep sump and a header tank to store of some water to hopefully last out a short period without wind (probably only hours) before one has to go hook the bike up to the rope pump and start pedaling to pump the water.

If someone knows lots about hydraulics and can come up with ways to "store" the wind power using such methods, I'm sure there are people here that would be interested in the methods. Also think about how to integrate backup systems for when the wind fails when someone isn't sitting there to notice and start running buckets.

Think the header tank with battery + wind + solar pump keeping it full was the closest. Handy to have a river or stream nearby.

Hydraulic fluid is usually oil and you can't compress it (wouldn't be hydraulic then):)
You could compress air and run air driven pumps, but a lot of heat waste and the higher the compression the worse it gets.

Best I could hope for is to pump a large amount of water into an elevated tank and slowly release it to add oxygen back to the water.

If you happen to live in a place where wind is dependable there are many things you could do.

If you live in a place with steady wind and/or river and you can build high towers for windmills and water towers, you could probably do a fair bit with only minimal use of electricity for backup.