Pond culture, the area of which reached 2.37 million ha in 2010 and provided more than 70% of the freshwater aquaculture product in China, has become increasingly important in aquaculture in the last ten years. In order to achieve higher product yields, intensive culture of food fish has been widely employed in pond culture. However, overfeeding of bait in the intensive culture system has caused serious eutrophication problems (such as nitrogen and phosphorus enrichment) in the sediment and water in these ponds, which has become an important obstacle for the sustainable development of pond aquaculture. The rice cropping system has a significant capacity for water purification by rice plant accumulation, paddy soil adsorption and microbial degradation. Therefore, coupling of the rice cropping system and pond culture system could have great potential for ecological restoration of aquaculture pond eutrophication. With a summary of related research and field surveys, this paper comprehensively analyzed the effects of three coupled modes (floating-bed rice planting system, artificially constructed rice paddy wetland system and rice-fish system) on the restoration of aquaculture pond eutrophication and the use efficiency of nitrogen and phosphorus, and conclusions were drawn regarding the technical characteristics and problems in the application of these three coupled modes. The floating-bed rice planting system is an in situ remediation technology where rice was planted in a floating-bed in the pond as the phytoremediation plant and the nutrients were removed directly by the floating-bed system, mainly through accumulation by the rice plant and to a lesser extent adsorption by the floating-bed. Field studies had reported that nitrogen and phosphorus in pond water could be reduced by 29.0%-90.3% and 32.1%-49.1%, respectively, depending on the coverage area of the floating-bed and the nutrient content in the pond water. Whether the floating-bed rice planting system had a significant effect on the removal of nutrients in pond sediment is still unknown. The artificially constructed rice paddy wetland system is an ex situ restoration technology. The aquaculture water was firstly pumped from the pond to the artificially constructed rice paddy wetland, which removed the excess nutrients in the pond water by rice plant accumulation and paddy soil adsorption; the purified water was then pumped back to the pond. The nitrogen and phosphorus content in pumped pond water could be reduced by 65.2% and 72.0%, respectively, through the restoration of rice paddy wetland. Irrigation, fertilization and leakage affected the remediation effect of rice paddy wetland. However, there is a secondary pollution risk that pesticide used in rice paddy wetland may be left in pumped back water and have a toxic effect on the fish. Additionally, the eutrophic runoff from the rice paddy wetland during the rainy season would contaminate nearby water. The rice-fish system is an ecological rice-fish co-culture model. Compared to pond culture, rice-fish co-culture could reduce the bait feed and nutrient enrichment risk by the mutually beneficial relationship of fish and rice. Replacing the pond culture mode with rice-fish co-culture would greatly decrease the aquaculture water pollution risk. However, the area of rice-fish co-culture has increased slowly due to the lower economic benefit and higher labour density relative to other modes. Based on these analyses, this paper further proposed that more attention should be paid to research on special rice varieties for phytoremediation, restoration mechanism investigation and technology application, and the construction of ecological compensation mechanisms for the ecological restoration of aquaculture pond eutrophication.