Study of Nitrification Process in a Media Raised Bed Based Aquaponic System

Abstract

Aquaponic is an integrated farming approach which combines aquaculture and hydroponic. In which aquaculture is fish farming, while hydroponic is soil-less plant farming. Aquaponic system recirculate water from fish tank, which is rich with nutrients obtained from fish muck, the water than filtered by going through the plant growing bed and feed the plant by using its nutrient at the same time. Clean water which came out from the growing bed is redirected to the fish tank. High amount of ammonia in fish tank might threaten the fish ecosystem in aquaculture. However, nitrification bacteria in the biofilter medium can transfer ammonia nitrogen into nitrate and nitrite nitrogen as a nutrition for plants in hydroponic system. In this study, the nitrification process of ammonia nitrogen is studied at 4 different bio-filter medium which are rockwool, pumice stone, gravel and zeolite. It was found that pumice stone gave the best nitrification process with nitrate concentration of 131.62 mg/L.