Date
Spring 2019
Document Type
Poster Session
Department
Biological Sciences
Advisor
Rachel Larsen PhD
Keywords
aquaponics, filtration, microbes, efficiency
Abstract
Farming practices have always been labor intensive and required a great deal of resources including space, nutrients, heavy equipment, and a great deal care. Hydroponics sought to remedy this with its space saving, small scale-high yield strategy. However, this brought problems of a more sensitive system that requires constant testing and regulation of chemicals and minerals. The addition of an organic fertilizer from fish and filtration system comprised of a community of microbes reduces the taxing rituals of aquaponics and recategorizes the system as Aquaponics. In aquaponics, the plants receive their nitrogen from a the ammonia produced by fish in a tank. This ammonia is converted into usable nitrogen by a series of collection tanks comprised of various microorganisms. Using community genomic sequencing and chemical analysis of isolated locations throughout the aquaponics system we observed which microbes are likely to have a positive influence throughout the system and what intra-microbial challenges they face. Identifying the microbial community and its organismal elements provides for a more precise level of tuning within an aquaponics system with the goal of identifying an optimal micro-macro species relationship that offers maximum system efficiency.
Start Date
4-19-2019 1:15 PM
Recommended Citation
Melo, Nathan and Corney, Jacob, "Distribution Of The Aquaponics Microbiome And Their Division Of Labor" (2019). Thinking Matters Symposium Archive. 176.
https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/thinking_matters/176
