Background:
Traditionally, in aquaculture practices, the nutrients provided by the fish in the form of faecal matter and feed waste would normally be discharged and could contribute to environmental pollution. Also, in hydroponics, an additional nutrient solution is required for the growth of plants. An integrative approach to solve both of these problems is the removal of fish-generated nutrients by plants, which prolongs water use; and minimizes water discharge to outside of the system and hence reduce the waste of resource. The innovative agricultural technique “aquaponics” is the bio-integrated food production system, which allows the harvest of two types of crops (fish and plants) efficiently in a cramped area, for example in the backyard, on the roof-top and even inside the house with minimal water wastage. The aquaponics technique that will give fruitful output with low initial investment, lesser space consumption, and least possible man-hour involvement:
Technology Details:
Being inspired by the FRP (Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic) evolution in the aquaculture sector, a pilot-scale NFT aquaponics system has been developed at ICAR-CIFA in the year 2017 to assess the growth of fish and plants in the system under ICAR-AICRP (PET). The major difference of the recently designed and developed FRP aquaponics system is the aggressive use of lightweight FRP and other plastics for improved portability, ease of maintenance, durability, and utilization of automation with lesser energy requirements for increased productivity. The system is calibrated to work without constant monitoring, which in these days is demanding as more and more people are getting involved in multiple professions. Automatic water level sensor and adaptive recirculation technique are some of the examples of the autonomous technologies being used in this experiment. Portability is another aspect which was kept in mind, to transport the system to remote areas easily and make the users aware of such adventitious technique of farming. Our developed NFT aquaponics system having some advantages over existing systems as mentioned below.:
? The technology being developed on versatile scaling platform, the actual capacity can be varied according to the need of production.:
? The present designed and developed unit leaps ahead in the field of portability by use of lightweight FRP in major components like fish rearing and hydroponics tanks. Streamlined construction of the system with simple parts makes it easy to dismantle and transport in a medium-sized truck, and it can be easily put together in an environmentally suitable site. :
? This system worked mainly on gravity driven automated setup provides high level of energy efficiency. The NFT aquaponics is developed with scalable design, which in turn will benefit farmers and entrepreneurs of each segment.:
? Automated system requires less manpower and energy. This technology runs on the principle of soil less agriculture, which means the arability of the soil does not have any impact on the system as well as the system does not impact the soil biology