ECONOMIC ASSESSMENT OF DECOUPLED SEMI-COMMERCIAL AQUAPONIC SYSTEM FROM 2015 TO 2019

Since 2015, an aquaponics working group comprised of professors and students from Aquaculture, Horticulture, Biosystems Engineering, and Food Science have been operating a semi-commercial aquaponic system. The aquaponic system includes one standard commercial greenhouse for fish production and one standard commercial greenhouse for plant production.

In the fish greenhouse N ile tilapia are grown in one 27,000-gallon. Tilapia are housed in a standard commercial greenhouse measuring 2,880 square feet. Tilapia of various sizes are grown simultaneously and are partially harvested as the market demands at approximately one pound. Fish are fed multiple times per day with a commercial fish feed at varying protein levels depending on their size. What fish effluent is used for watering vegetables is replaced with fresh water by gravity from a rain-fed reservoir.

In the plant greenhouse cucumbers and cherry tomatoes are produced in Dutch buckets filled with a substrate, either pine bark or perlite. The plants are trellised to make use of the three-dimensional space of the greenhouse. Plants are irrigated with fish effluent using drip emitters and an irrigation pump. Environmental conditions are controlled by a thermostat and a humidity probe based on the seasonal parameters. Propane is burned as heating fuel in the winter.

All income and expenses related to the system have been carefully documented from the beginning of the operation up to the present day. That data will be presented in an economic assessment of the system as a whole, including the cash flow, enterprise budgets for both plant and fish production, and some sensitivity analysis.