A personal story that reflects on the situations, the experiences, the emotions and the fears. to come to this conclusion:

I was struck at that moment with how much my life felt like an aquaponics system.

Standing in shit up to my thighs, in a container that I felt I was suffocating in, in the dark and hard to breath. This filter is where the process starts. The solid waste is collected here (and one large Murray cod that managed to find its way in there), it got stuck in the matting and the water that flowed out was cleaner.

It needed to go through the second biological filtration tank, where all the nutrients were converted into fertiliser that the plants could absorb. From the biofilter, the water went through a deep-water system with rafts on top allowing the plants to absorb the nutrients, cleaning the water for the fish. The water then went back into the fish tank clean, and the cycle kept happening. Water suctioned out the bottom of the tanks and moving though.

The fish tank reminded me of my thoughts churning, the water constantly flowing and moving, set at an angle to let the water churn and mix the air in the water. The fish represented the thoughts and the pressures that I was feeling, leaving me overwhelmed. The water with these thoughts/ fish waste went into the first sump containing the matting which removed the solid waste. Kind of like isolating what are my real thoughts and the thoughts that the anxiety octopus was causing me to think. The separation of things occurred in here.

My thoughts had become like the ammonia in the water now, not just the overwhelming label of ‘fish waste’. Moving into the biofilter where the ammonia is converted by bacteria first into nitrite, then nitrate ~ which can be absorbed by the plants.

My life was like an aquaponics system, and I was inspired by the potential this held.