Aquaponics and Your Life

Today, George and I put fish into our aquaponics system. The fish we bought are Zebra Danio fish. We chose these fish because of the amount of waste they produce. Also, we have spring break coming up next week and we needed fish that could survive without eating a lot of food over the course of about 10 days.

We also planted out mesclun seeds. Over the past few days, they have been germinating. To make our seeds germinate, we wrapped them into a damp paper towel, put them into a sealed container, and let them sit under a light for three days. This process allows for the first stems of the seed to sprout without direct sunlight.

For our class, we were instructed to create a hydroponics system. A hydroponics system is a “dirt-less” environment that allows for plant growth. This is done by taking nutrient rich water and pumping it into a grow bed.

There are many different types of hydroponics systems and after doing research Brian and I have decided to create an aquaponics system. This system uses both fish and ideas from hydroponics. The basic idea consists of using fish to create waste/nutrient rich water which is then pumped straight into our grow bed. The plants then use the nutrients from the fish waste, allowing them to grow and filter the water for the fish. From the pictures you can see our fish tank is located below our grow bed so water must be pumped to the grow bed and then drained back down through using a pipe.We started germinating our seeds today.

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