Journal of Emerging Scholarship

Commercial aquaponic systems produce food through a symbiotic relationship between plants and aquatic animals. We constructed a small aquaponic system to determine if commercial aquaponics could be replicated on a smaller, educational scale. This system used the waste from Nile tilapia to grow a combination of lettuce and tomatoes by cycling water between the fish and plant tanks. The system proved effective in growing both tilapia and food plants. The plants were evidently able to gain proper nutrients from the aquatic animal byproducts and were able to remove potentially toxic nitrogen wastes from the animal tank.