Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I'm assuming if the fish catch a sort of sickness, pretty much everything in the AP system needs to be quarantined, or is my assumption wrong?

If the fish are diseased and you eat the plants, but not the fish, would you get sick?

No... firstly, fish are cold blooded, so most of the diseases that may be transmmitable to humans through food just can't happen...

Of course contamination of your plants by poor human hygiene is possible... human to human transmission...

Secondly, fish diseases are pathogens such as bacteria, parasites and fungal diseases...

Whilst such micro-organisms are ever present and survive readily in the water... they aren't taken up into plant tissue...

The only way of ingesting any such pathogens would be if you were to rinse your plants in infected water... and eat them raw... any pathogens are killed by water temperatures used by boiling, steaming etc...

Eating infected fish, however, could be a different matter...

Fish, plants and humans generally don't share diseases. Sorry you won't get fin rot from eating a tomato grown in an ap system where a fish died of fin rot. The fish are not going to catch Blossom end rot from plants and the broccoli isn't going to catch the flu.

However, I don't recommend eating raw broccoli if some one with the flu has been coughing on it. (this is why they put those glass shields up over salad bars, so people are not breathing on the foods.)

The worries about fish getting sick in an AP system is some diseases or more commonly parasites like ich could re-infect new fish when you add them into the system if you don't take steps to eliminate the problem before adding new fish. (with ich this is done with salt and temperature for a period of time to kill off all stages of the parasite.)

As to eating diseased fish, I suppose it would depend on the disease and if the fish were even appealing anymore. Most of us don't want to eat a fish dieing of a disease in any case so it isn't usually even something to worry about.

There is only one infection I've heard of that affects humans handling fish and I don't even think it is a disease to the fish. It would be a fungal infection I believe and most cases of it happen to people working in fish processing facilities that happen to cut themselves while cleaning fish. So if you have been handling lots of fish and have unexplained illness/fatigue let the doctors know you handle fish to help them determine the cause of the illness. I believe we have one member that now uses gloves when handling fish for this reason though this does not seem to be a common problem and I certainly would not let it stop you from doing Aquaponics. Especially if you are doing gold fish since I don't expect you to be cleaning lots of them so at minimal risk of developing an infection from open cuts on your hands while handling them.

Add to that, growing moringa, I really don't expect there to be any risk of disease transmission on moringa leaves.

Thanks again for the info you guys, lots of pleasant info to hear.



As for the moringa... the seeds are beginning to sprout out. The ones I soaked for 24 hours and then placed in plastic bags and inside a dark drawer still look all the same. Right now the only lights I have above them are cheap T5 24 watters. If things go good I guess I'll have to buy one of them small HPS 150w kits.

hahahahah - imagine a fish with blossom end rot lol

Sorry