MEDARA AKPAN

Age 14 | Quispamsis, NB

First Place in Valley Christian Academy Science Fair

Edited by Danlin Zeng

Did you know that fish and plants could feed the planet while protecting the environment? Aquaponics is a method of agriculture where the fish and the plants help each other grow by recycling Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium (NPK) in the water. Fish feces and other waste such as shedding, go up through a water pump that cycles the water through the plants’ roots. The clean water falls down a hole that leads straight back to the fish tank. The plants’ roots takes up nutrients found in fish feces, giving back habitable water for the fish. Aquaponics helps the environment by recycling water and gives another way to grow crops in any environment. No harmful chemicals are used either.

This experiment aims to show which plant species grows the most rapidly in a home indoor aquaponics system. I hypothesized that if I grew Kale, Basil, and Radish microgreen seeds, then Kale will have better growth results over the same period, as research has shown Kale is the most tolerant to different environments.

INTRODUCTION

I successfully grew the three sets of microgreen seeds along with a Betta fish in a simple home aquaponics system and monitored their growth rates over in 2 trials with a total of 2 weeks. Each trial had observation recorded every 2 days. When I finished the project, I found that though all the plants grew, the Radish microgreen seeds actually had the best growth results in both of my trials. For example, in the second trial, the radish grew 5.5cm more in height than the first trial. In the second trial for all plants, they seemed to have grown faster in the same amount of time. On average, in total, all the plants grew 3.8cm better in the second trial, than the first trial.

The results of my testing have shown that you can grow 3 microgreen garden vegetables in a home indoor aquaponics system. If you don’t need a fancy greenhouse system for aquaponics, then almost anyone can grow vegetables at home all year round. If more people do this, less water, chemicals and space will be used in agriculture and this is better for the environment. Also, knowing which plants grow best will help future aquaponics farmers make better choices of what plants to grow.
Independent variable: The plants growing in Aquaponics Dependent variable: Height, width, quantity of leaves per stem Controlled variable: The aquaponics system/Temperature/Light

SIGNIFICANCE

With normal agriculture, extensive amounts of water are used. Aquaponics reduces water waste. Aquaponics does not need the heavy machines usually used for normal harvest. They do not use any chemicals, since there is no soil used in growing. The Aqua- ponic location is not important as long as it is in a temperature-controlled area. Aquaponics benefits cities by saving space for more city growth, and also helps places that do not have agricultural land to farm. My aim was to successfully grow 3 microgreen seeds in an indoor Aquaponic system at home and determine which one grows best.

Regions that don’t have much agricultural land to grow crops could benefit from this project. Cities can benefit as well, because as cities grow bigger, much land is used for purposes other than agriculture. Aquaponics can be used to grow plants, raise fish, while conserving water at the same time. This means that more food could be produced in an environmentally friendly way while not much agricultural growing space would be needed.

MATERIALS

1 Dragon scale Betta / 1 Moonlight Betta, 1 pack of Betta food, 1 aquaponic system, kale, basil, and radish microgreen seeds, Nu- trient/d-klor components.

METHOD

Plants were grown in one system containing three separate pods (one for each type of microgreen seeds) and measurements taken every 2 days during the experiment. The height, width, and quantity of leaves per stem were recorded for each type of plant. Two experiments were done and lasted four days each time.

PROCEDURE

Clean the aquaponics system and let dry with a clean towel. Set up the system after the drying process. Include a decorative item for the fish.
Plant 1 teaspoon of each set of the Kale and basil microgreen seeds inside the grow stones and pour some water under the grow pods, so the seeds can soak in the water for more than 12 hours and speed up their growth process.
Gently put the veiltail betta in fish tank water while it’s still in the bag. The fish should stay in that position for 20 minutes. When 20 minutes is up, set the fish free into the water and put the grow bed top on. Plug in the pump and feed the fish 3 fish balls by using the feeding hole in the growing tray.
Record this as your starting, Take pictures of the seeds
Feed the fish 3 balls from the container of fish food every day and record how tall the plant is every 2 days.
When the trial ends, harvest the plants and record the observations of plant growth. You are measuring the plant’s grow patch width, height, and how many leaves per stem.
Clean fish tank and grow pods for the next practice. Make sure that when you clean the fish tank, you have the fish in a separate container.
Add d-klor to the fish tank water and take pictures of plants for records.
Put the fish in new fish tank water and set the tank up with the bed and plant the new set of seeds and record this as the start for the second trial.
The next day, repeat steps number (4-6)
After the 20 minutes have elapsed, transfer fish into tank. Plug pump in.
Repeat step 11-12.
When this trial ends, record and harvest plants. 14. Get observations together and pictures for review.

RESULTS

During the first trial, the Radish microgreen plants grew well, and it looked almost ready to harvest! The Kale microgreen plants were starting to grow in height, and had a yellow tinge, whilst the Basil microgreen plants barely grew, and was a green mush inside the grow stones. The Radish had grown 8.5cm, Kale grew 5cm, while the Basil had no growth results. If we go back to the charts, we can bring up that Kale had matured by 2.5cm however between the first and the second record, Radish matured by 5.5 cm, and Basil grew 2.5cm in height. From the table, I’ve noticed that Radish had more leaves per stem in the first trial, while in the second trial, Radish relatively had the same amount of leaves per stem as Kale. By width (grow patch), I was measuring how much each set of plants spread across their grow stones. Going back to the chart, on average the final width (grow patch) record for the first trial is 3.7cm and for the second, 3.2cm. The first trial had better results in width (grow patch), than the second trial. By just analysing the table, it’s easy to tell that Radish had better growth in general, in the second trial.

Before my second trial, my first fish unfortunately died, because we cleaned the fish tank when we were not supposed to. At the end of the second trial, I saw that the Radish microgreen plants looked ready to be harvested. They had a nice green colour and had grown a lot in height. The Kale microgreen plants did better than the first time. They had grown much more in height, and looked like they were almost ready for harvest. The Basil microgreen plant did a bit better than the previous trial. There were a few saplings here and there, but overall, did not grow very well. The radish grew to an amazing height of 14cm, Kale grew 8cm, and least, the Basil, grew only 3cm.

**Figure 1**: Trial 1 growth measurements

**Figure 2**: Trial 2 growth measurements

Figures 3-6

DISCUSSION

In the end, the radish microgreen seeds had the best growth results. It grew faster than the other set of plants, in the second trial, it grew 5.5 cm more than the first trial. I noticed in the second trial, the radish grew faster. It looked really healthy, and ready to eat at the time of harvest. From the pictures, you can tell that when the radish grew, it took up a bit of space as it grew taller. I also observed that the leaves on the radish compared to the kale, where bigger had had more depth in colour when it was time to harvest the plants, thus proving my hypothesis to be wrong. In second place came the kale, and in last, the basil. I am unsure of what caused the basil to grow so slowly. Perhaps it needed a bit more growing space, or the temperature was not the best for the plant, it might have required more sunlight or a longer germination period. I think the radish did best because it might have been tweaked to fit best with the aquaponic system. It did come with the Aqua- ponic kit. From my results, I learned that I can successfully grow 3 microgreen seeds in Aquaponics. I would not recommend that basil microgreen seeds be grown in an aquaponics system, due to its poor growth results.

Next time I do this project, instead of using Basil as part of the project, I would just keep it as Kale and Radish microgreen seeds. I will also do a comparison between Aquaponics and Hydroponics, where I do 3 different trials, and have the microgreen seeds grow at the same time in both Aquaponics and Hydroponics, in the 3 different trials, making sure that I have enough time to do all 3 trials.

CONCLUSION

In this project, I grew 3 Microgreens, Kale, Basil and Radish, in Aquaponics and measured their growth over a fixed period of time. I hypothesized that the kale microgreens would grow better, but my hypothesis was proven wrong, with the radish microgreens growing the fastest. My key findings were that the Basil did not grow to the height I had expected of 8cm-12cm. The Radish had great results in both trials. It grew fast, and almost doubled in height in the second trial. I did notice that the Kale grew a moderate amount in both trials. I did observe that in both trials some plants grew inside the tank! I’ve learned that I can grow 3 Microgreens in Aquaponics and measure their growth in a fixed period of time. I also learned that the radish microgreens grew better in my experiment. I would advise that anyone starting a home aquaponics system should use radish microgreens for best results. Kale should be given more time to grow. I would not recommend that basil microgreen seeds be grown in an aquaponics system, due to its poor growth results. Overall, I really enjoyed this project, and would repeat this experiment with the improvements mentioned above.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you, dad, for helping me research materials required and helping me clean the aquaponics grow bed. Thank you, mom, for helping me revise my report. Also, thank you to my principal and teachers for supporting me while I edited my project.

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