Aquaponics—Integrating Fish and Plant Culture

Abstract

Population of Bangladesh is increasing in geometric scale that creates pressure on natural resources and food security, hence, increasing demand of fish protein. For this farmers use a huge amount of water, feed and chemicals which depleted underground water, creates air and water pollution and hazards on environment as well as on human health. An attempt made to introduce aquaponics system for fish and vegetable production through deceiving aquaculture wastes. The aquaponics systems such as media based system for taro and tomato and nutrient film technique for water spinach used to see the effectiveness of nutrient trapping and vegetable grown in lab and field conditions. Tilapia was the experimental fish in all the systems for its hardy nature. Fishes fed pellet feed twice at 10% gradually it is decreased at 5% of their body weight. Fish tank water irrigated with a mini pump to the systems which then return to the fish tank. The denitrifying bacteria convert the wastes into nutrients for the vegetables and made the water clean for fish before return to the tank again. All the experiments gave better performance than the control. The tomato production cycle in aquaponics system was longer and less disease prone than the control. Farmers of experiment area accept this technique willingly and their perception on aquaponics performances is good. The experiments showed that nutrient recycling is not a luxury reserved for rural areas with space limitation; instead, the additionally occupied surface generates income by producing marketable goods. By converting nutrients into biomass, treating wastewater could become a profitable business in third world countries.

Fish effluents promote root growth and suppress fungal diseases in tomato transplants

“…A sustainable alternative to take advantage of the wastewater coming from this industry is to recycle fish effluent as part of an irrigation strategy for a highvalue crop such as greenhouse vegetables. Combining aquaculture with hydroponic production, an integrated system called aquaponics, has been shown to be effective as a year-round production system for fish and lettuce, herbs or other plants (Al-Hafedh et al 2008;Pantanella et al 2012;Rakocy 2012). Even in these aquaponics production systems, there is still a need for suspended solids removal and a biofilter component (Rakocy and Hargreaves 1993).…”

“…4). DISCUSSION Sustainability of fish culture production systems depends highly on the effective management of released wastes to reduce its impact on the environment (Rakocy 2012;Turcios and Papenbrock 2014). To follow increasingly restrictive guidelines in the aquaculture industry, an emphasis has been placed on reducing the source itself of such solid and liquid wastes or finding alternative use for them.…”

Microbial Effects on the Production of Aquaponically Grown Lettuce

“…It has been postulated that aquaponic systems supply more than just nutrients, and somehow cultivate an ecosystem of microorganisms, rhizobacteria, or fungi that are beneficial to the plants in the system [4]. It is well known that nitrifying bacteria associated with an aquaponic system reduce ammonia and nitrite nitrogen to nitrate, all of which can be harmful to fish [5,6]. The integration of fish and plant components raises the possibility that there are other organisms and products or byproducts associated with the fish system that improve the growth of aquaponic plants using less than the ideal nutrient conditions supplied from closely controlled hydroponic-type nutrient conditions.…”

Production and chemical composition of hydrophytes cultivated in aquaponics

“…Aquaculture waste can be used as a source of nutrients for plant growth in hydroponic systems, so it is possible to incorporate hydroponics into aquaculture. In this sense, aquaponics, de ned as the integration of hydroponic plant production in a recirculating aquaculture system, has been proposed as a sustainable alternative to control the accumulation of waste produced by sh farming (Rakocy 2010 (Watson 1971). Plants are part of the biological lters of aquaponic systems and take the nutrients they need, such as nitrates, from the water, thus cleaning the water that returns to the sh tank (Espinosa et al 2016) and allowing the sh to live in a suitable environment for its growth and development, while reducing the quantity of water that needs to be replaced.…”