Why is the Sky blue? Because the ‘fishies’ go “blue, blue, blue!”

Why is the Sky blue? Because the ‘fishies’ go “blue, blue, blue!” 

By: Angel I. Torres Jr.  

 

One of the common issues encountered today seems to be human over population. As the population continues to grow, we must find ways to provide more food for the people. Several methods were found to be successful in producing higher yields of products to keep up with the high demand for food. In attempting to achieve this goal, the increase of nitrogen use in agricultural systems. However, this has led to leaching of reactive nitrogen forms such as ammonia and nitrates for negatively affect environment. This article focuses, not only on providing a good source of protein to the increasing populations, but also aims to alleviate the excessive amounts of reactive nitrogen that leach into our environment every year.  

Scientists plan to do this by constructing a system that allows microbes, an aquaculture, and a sustainable garden to live symbiotically while simultaneously saving the environment. This can be done by having a tank for your aquaculture which provides nitrogenous wastes from fish. A biofilter which will contain most of the microbial activity in charge of nitrogen recovery, and a grow bed for your crop which will also take part in some of the water filtration.  The water runs through each of the components in a cycle yielding us more fish that can be used as a great source of protein, and a selection of crops which can be used for feed and compost. In addition to being able to feed the people with organic food, aquaponic technology allows us to conserve on the amount of land necessary for farming. This can be achieved by stacking grow beds along the y-axis, instead of reaching for more land in search of higher yields. More so, the aquaculture systems can be installed in areas where faming is poor due to arid or freezing temperatures, or lack of nutrient-rich soils in an area.  As incredible as that may sound, it was more interesting to find that this study focused on obtaining very specific information regarding the ecological interactions that occur in a man-made system. People tend to think of ecology taking place outdoors where plants, animals, and other factors interact freely. However, Wongkiew, S. et al., decided to throw genetics into the mix as well to find give us very specific information about the ecological interactions taking place. Information was taken from plant matter, present bacteria, and muscle tissue in fish in efforts to track down how nitrogen transformations take place. In the end it was found that these interactions actually lowered pH levels, but did not necessarily decrease their microbial populations, and negatively affect their nitrogen recovery. All of this to find better ways to decrease pollutions, and feed future generations.  

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References 

Wongkiew, S., Park, M.R., Chandran, K., and Khanal S.K 2018. Aquaponic Systems for Sustainable Resource Recovery: Linking Nitrogen Transformations to Microbial communites. Environ. Sci. Qual. 1:A-L. DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.8b04177