Design and development of a portable and streamlined nutrient film technique (NFT) aquaponic system

One pilot-scale portable Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) aquaponic system has been designed, developed, and tested at ICAR-CIFA, Bhubaneswar for a period of 90 days (October to December 2018) to study the efficiency of the new design. The experimental setup has three separate units, each consisting of four major components, such as Fibreglass Reinforced Plastic (FRP) round fish culture tank (empty set2.15 x 0.9 m) with operational capacity 2800 L, biofilter unit made up of Polypropylene (PP) of 100 L capacity, FRP rectangular hydroponics tank (4 x 0.9 x 0.35 m) having 2.64 m(2) plantation area and High-density Polyethylene (HDPE) sump (empty set0.6 x 0.7 m) of 200 L capacity. Implementation of custom designed and calibrated automatic water recirculation system gives an average flow rate of 94.7 L/h for continuous flow of nutrients from fish culture tank to hydroponics tank. The designed system harnesses gravity flow in 75 % of the cycle. For performance assessment, the system was initially stocked with 54 numbers of fish fry/m(3) (153.7 g/m(3)) of pangas (Pangasius hypophthalmus) in culture tank and 27 marigold (Tagetes erecta) plants/m(2) in hydroponics tank. Length and weight gain of fish were by 77.04 % and 397.2 % from initial, respectively, and marigold plant harvested 107 number of flowers/m(2). The Total Ammoniacal Nitrogen (TAN) reduction in biofilter was found to be 61.97 %.