Aquaponics Systems
Our aquaponics system started off at the extreme hotel and was very different from what we have today.
We have created a breeding room to produce our own tilapia, changed the shape of our fish tanks and moved from mainly media based beds to raft beds in our commercial grow beds as well as realizing we needed sump tanks.
Below you can see how the system looks at the moment.
Breeding room
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- Breeding room and Hatchery: The fish breed in the glass tanks and the females are kept here until their eggs are ready to be harvested
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- IBC tanks where the young tilapia spend their first month
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- Plastic bottles make a perfect place for tilapia eggs to hatch
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- these can be turned off to stop the water flow at any time
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- food production for the baby tilapia-reusing an old gallon water jug
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- feeding time
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- A cup of food ready to be put in the tank
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- Here is where the amonia nitrites are transformed to nitrates before the water goes to the plants
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- When they aren’t being used for breeding the fish are kept outside in the plant nursery in these tanks
Nursery
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- Our plant nursery is also part of the aquaponics system. We have mainly media based beds. Water reaches the plants through an ebb and flow system
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- Here we can experiment with plants that do better in media based beds.
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- Letting plants go to seed requires more nutrients and more time and usually involves the plants becoming bigger so a media based bed is much more suitable for this.
Commercial tanks
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- There are four of these tanks, meaning that when we harvest from one tank we don’t lose all the nutrients at once for our connected grow beds.
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- tilapia in our commercial systems. We use tilapia because they are fast growing, hardy and very popular in the caribbean.
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- The tilapia feeding in the commercial system. sOme of the feed is duckweed which is grown right next to the system.
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- Like in the breeding room the water goes through a sump tank before being sent to the grow beds.
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- Not all tanks are connected. We connect two fish tanks with two grow beds meaning if there is a problem it will only effect half the system.
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- In this tank here we are starting to grow freshwater shrimp which are great for cleaning the tanks and dealing with excess nutriesnts
Commercial grow beds
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- We have two grow beds on either side of the four commercial fish tanks
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- Some of the beds are covered by netting which gives some shade and also reduces impact of very heavy rain
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- All our beds in the commercial system are floating raft beds. This is ideal for fast growing greens
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- Raft beds are very easy to adapt and move around. They allow us to shift sections meaning we can put the newest plants nearest the fish tanks so they get the highest level of nutrients and then move them down the beds as they mature
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- What one of our Aquaponic Floating Raft plant beds look like now:
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- Alongside our system we have a bed full of duckweed. This allows us to grow some of the tilapia’s food using the nutrients they produce
Food production
another thing that has changed a lot is the way we feed our fish. We have gone from one size commercial feed for everything to a much more complex (and sustainable) system. Different feeds for different ages is very important. they vary in size and nutrient levels so when we try to produce our own it’s important to keep these levels the same. We use moringa, duckweed and black soldier flies to supplement their diet and when we are producing enough worms in our vermiculture system those can also be used.
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- one of the commercial feeds we use
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- smaller size feed for younger fish
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- Our own feed
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- Some dried moringa
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- Our dehydrator is invaluable for drying out duckweed and moringa for our self made feed
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- The completed breeding chamber for the black soldier fly production