Gains N Greens

Sammanfattning: At present, it is focused either on aquaculture or agriculture. Those who focus on aquaculture or Recirculating Aquaponics System (RAS) receive a by-product of ammonia, which is then cleaned and the water either goes back to the fish or it is not cleaned at all and as they do in the salmon farms for example they let it sink to the bottom which creates eutrophication and major problems among the marine. Those who focus on agriculture use colossal amounts of land and outdoor areas for cultivation. Most of them use chicken manure and huge amounts of pesticides for the plants to be optimal. Another alternative is that you can use aquaponics, which is a kind of ecosystem where fish and plants live and thrive on each other's residual products. The fish produce ammonia in the fish tank which eventually makes the water uninhabitable and instead of having a cleaning pump in the fish tank, the water is sent to the cultivation bed where the plants pick up the nutrients and clean the water in turn so that the water can be pumped back to the fish tank. This system makes it possible to produce both fish and plants in an optimized and safe system. Aquaponics is advantageous in that it utilizes the by-product of the fish and gives it to the plants. Where ammonia is the fish’s residual product that turns into nitrite and then to nitrate and it is precisely nitrate that the plants use as nutrition, in turn, they purify the water that goes back into the fish tanks, which gives a closed cycle. At present, aquaponics has not been able to impact on a large scale more than in a few places, partly because there is ignorance of how it works and partly because it requires technical knowledge of how to build a functioning system together. The project goal that we strive for is to get a PlugNPlay solution that enables people who want to invest in aquaponics, but do not have the technical knowledge to compile a functioning optimal system. The project group will also compare different farming methods and make measurements on which medium is the best to grow in, but also what kind of food that works to grow in an efficient way.