Integrated Farming: Aquaponics

welcome to today's lecture and today's lecture is a very special one i'm at this quantum eco farm which is an aquaponic farm now we have been learning a lot about flow through system pond system recirculating system and today we get to see all this in application now with me here is mr cool one of the owners of this farm and he started this project and you can see that it has already uh in progress and he has many more uh setup to go through so let's ask him uh when did you start this farm mr cook oh okay this farm was started november last year and it's because of the mco and most of us all of us actually are actually from oil and gas industry and in between you know i do some small research from home and then later stage when i was free when i'm not working then there's a small farm in gombak from so throughout the time i cannot travel that's why i stuck in yoga and then do the research and because a lot of posting on facebook and then you know a friend suggested why don't we just go and do a commercial farm and then i started to work on the business plan and then a few people was interested in the time also here and we just sit down and we started and uh you know six of us we every each of us throwing some money and then we find the land actually this land was i searched for islam for quite a long time because of the water quality and it appears that iceland is next to us so the water quality is guaranteed that's why we started in here so uh is it true that you're using tap water from slang iceland no we are using ground water actually groundwater ah there is a tip well and there are two tip wells [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] without a heavy metal contamination and then we started this okay so uh it's been november to last november is it yes last november now it's almost one year so uh how's your how's your journey in dealing with aquaponics is it what you expected uh easier or harder oh um i think most of the people started aquaponics has conceptual ideas of growing veggies from the from the fish waste so the conceptual is whether you grow fish to plant veggies or you plant veggies to grow fish these two ideas you look the same but i think there's a big difference because uh one is focus on the veggies the other one is focused on the aquaculture so when we sit down and look at the the commercial model and we think without a big investment on the fish even if you grow the veggies it's not economical because you are using the aqua culture resources just to plant the veggies and the return will not be good enough because you invest a lot because of the heavy equipment and all these things but your products is busy meaning that you have less output compared to what you invest in so that's why if you look at here we are you have more fish than typical uh phonic setup i mean the ratio [Applause] all right so yeah okay so what mr cool is saying uh he actually captured one of the essence of aquaponic production okay whether the system is plant oriented or fish oriented it's always this balancing act between plants and fish and this continued to this day to remain the holy grail of aquaponics can we actually balance these two to achieve the complete equilibrium that is that we so sought after in aquaponics okay the aquaponics as a background has been in research for at least 30 years now okay many prototype farms have been started with some commercial farms started but again this continued to remain one of the breakthroughs that we so sought after so so we shall see whether mr cool will be able to break through this so at this moment we are he is focusing on fish it's a fish oriented system okay and and as you said fish oriented system because of the economics okay fish fetch a higher price and of the investment that he has put in uh it's very reasonable that it should be a fish oriented system okay and in a while we shall see how how the whole system uh runs okay uh mr code this con here what system is this okay so so this is uh what is we refer as the iprs which is the important raceway system so many commercial farm which they use this raceway system is uh you create like artificial stream of river so you get current pushing the water through and then at the same time you basically able to get the waste coming on one side and then you what you call overflow the the waste and then you you go into the settling pond okay we will look at the settling front point okay so uh we have been looking at raceway systems in our past lectures and here you have it a commercial system that is raceway based so mr two says this is an important raceway system so it's a hybrid between a pond and a raceway and the idea is the water flows from one end and pushes it to this end here just like a river and and we have seen that this system has many advantages and this system is based on a recirculating system a recirculating raceway system that circulates throughout the entire entire farm here and and again if you see here at the top here the overflow this is one of the crucial piece of equipment that we have been talking about it is for this scum removal of the pond although we have so much fish in the pond there is actually comparative very little scum on the surface because of this flow through okay let's now go to the sauce uh where the water is being pushed and see and we should also look at the filtration system there okay mr cool and the partners are engineers they are they are in the oil and gas so when it comes to system design aquaculture engineering they know what they are doing okay let us hear how the water flow moves in this system uh mr cool what is this tank okay so so this is called the settling tank and uh the way we design it is all the wastewater is flowing back to this tank by gravity so in a way we don't use too much pump and because of the water level of the corn is higher than the circling tank it will fall naturally by gravity or the fish waste will be collected and these fish waste is reusable uh when it's too much dirty and we have to clean we'll suck this uh all this thing clean to the septic tank and when we put some bacteria to what we call this to make the water full of nutrients and then we recycle the water for the chili's foundation all right okay we have been talking about one one most important con simple concept but very fundamental that mr cool just alluded to that water always always flow from the top to the bottom very simple concept but when it's applied it's powerful this is a good example the raceway tanks is intentionally built higher than this setting tank and for this reason the water from the raceway tank enter to this setting tank through that pipe at the corner there okay you can see the water motion there is i can see something flowing out of there okay all the fecal matter of the fish you can see right now it's flowing out [Music] okay this is our evidence that the system is working and this tank here is a settling tank a certain tank meaning we want the fecal matters to settle at the bottom and we want the fecal matter to be to be mineralized okay to be converted into the nutrients and to be digested by the by the microorganism in the water and ideally we what remember we have mentioned that in a recirculating system your first step the most important thing you need to do is to remove all the particle metals so that it's not reintroduced into your system okay this is what the setting tank is for so now let's look at the second component okay here we have these brushes basically it blocks all the small particles which is floating in the water so usually when it's too small it's unable to set it settling down at the bottom so when it passes it will stick on the on the brushes and the water gets cleaner here and this bubble is simply to create a push away force that you see the bulb when the particle coming through it will push the particle back to that side so in this uh motion which is uh uh using a bubble but you cannot have two powerful or butter otherwise you create a turbulence so in a way we just use a natural way to to make sure the the waste is uh contained in this pond okay uh so this is the air bubble here is very similar to the air curtains you know when you enter a shop there is a air curtain that prevents the air conditioning from escaping this is the same concept is to prevent the particles from entering into the next tank and to contain it all within here and this brusher is also a sentiment a sediment trap you can see that it's rather efficient okay [Applause] so and the idea is it will progressively get cleaner as we move on to the second tank now the water i can see that it flows from the bottom to the to this side let's let mr cool explain this so so once uh the big solid is settling down there when you come to the second pond we'll have the uv light to kill all the harmful bacteria or whichever bacteria you have maybe in the system will kill them all because we'll have the bio filter on the other side and because of this now you get a secondary settling effect and we repeat the same thing but on the similar size however this time you can see the water is cleaner and we go to the brushes again and all this green stuff on the surface is actually dark wheat so it's a supplement for the fish the fish like this type of dark wheat because dark wheat is proven to be beneficial for for the fish or some people even use it for dark and chicken so one of the indicators also if the duckweed cannot grow means the water nutrient is not enough or maybe if the duck will die off then the nutrient is too much in such a way that we we have a good indicator whether when we should change over some water like cleaning the the settling tank okay so these are uh supplements for the for the fish we heat them once a week okay no dark dark weeds as a feed has been in research for for many years now okay uh this is one of the applications for dark wits as a supplement fit for the tilapia tilapia as our omnivores so that is the the uv light the four of them is to get rid of my micro organism okay the idea is generally uh there are exceptions but generally anaerobic bacteria are considered to be negatives and aerobic bacteria are considered to be positives and in this case this tank is most probably in anaerobic condition that is why the sterilization has to happen here and then in the next tank where the biofilter is we are hoping that it's a more aerobic bacteria we should perform all the nitrifications that we are after so those bacteria in the settling tank it may have some harmful bacteria which we don't want that's why we kill all the exterior in the process and when you come to the last uh pond for the fluctuation this is our bio filter so this is the bio filter whereby we give the oxygen a lot of them and inside we have three tons of myfanstone and also coralstone which is full of the calcium carbonate acting as a ph buffer so in a way the ph is stable because of the calcium carbonate exit in the system when the system creates acid because of the waste the calcium carbonate will balance it and the amount of the rocks that you put you require to check the water regularly if the the ph keep dropping you have to add more until it's stable okay so this is the aerobic biofiltration section there is more aeration going on here and the magic supposed to happen here this is where all the ammonia is converted to nitrates and to prevent ammonia poisoning and mr cool has said that he has dumped 3 000 kilogram of stones in there this is the my fancy and also the coral stones all of them has mineral properties and and much surface for bacteria to con colonize it and and this is the pump that is used to drive the the fertigation the the sprinkler system that we shall look at the moment and the amazing part to me of this system is there is a submersible pump right there that that is only 320 watts and this 330 watts is used to power this one two three four five six six of the raceway okay that is some serious engineering in my opinion okay so i i think that is a quite efficient use of energy there and in aquaponics uh many times what makes or break the farm is the energy okay especially in the recycling system uh the pump usually will bankrupt you okay if you don't design it properly uh it will not be profitable so six of them the engineers have i think have done a good job here and okay let's let's look at the sprinkler system okay so when it comes to energy saving we have put a lot of effort in this number one which is the submersible pump we're using the low pressure and high volume pump because literally you can see the the head is not too much because the water level itself is only like 40 centimeter different so in a way you don't need a pump with uh with the high pressure but you need a volume so that you can deliver the water fast enough to the to the pond okay there's one the two is this pump is only running by timer for using aeroponic you don't need to water the plant 24 hours so in our research and what we like to do is in any kind of method in aquaponics actually the plant doesn't need 24 hours of water but the moisture it is you need the moisture but the time for it to expose to water is no need to be 24 hours so this is how it works and this spline is laying this way so that it shares the same pump and you choke the input of the water by using a valve and this way you can make sure the water is distributed evenly and it goes to the pond and also it follows the same timer uh of this centrifugal pump the system runs 64 times a day with five minutes uh on time each time so in short these two pumps only run five five hour plus only in any single day so in turn uh this will save us a lot of uh energy okay okay so it's not it's not just the efficient use of pump it's also the amount of time is used it's also less they have designed it in such a way [Applause] okay mr cook can you tell me why you're putting a coffee [Applause] so this actually is to prevent the algae from growing in here right so we do want the sun to get here but [Applause] make sure the algae doesn't uh boom in in this uh okay okay nitrifying bacterias uh tend to be compete with microalgae so we usually want micro uh the bacteria to be in darkness okay so that if sunlight comes in the micro algae will take over the surface and your bacteria will drop okay so that's why there is a that is almost 100 here i think uh prevent the biofilter from exposed to sunlight now let's look at the plants now okay uh what we have here is a piece of foam uh that is very special let's mr cool explain about it okay so this is called the xbx from extruded polyester foam and typically this is used in uh what you call country like they have winter so the in the building uh of the war and the floor they use it to uh for insulation okay and this is not the normal polyester bubble type what do you call this foam and the hardness and compressive strength is higher and also it doesn't absorb any water that's why it's suitable for this type of usage and we have done this uh quite a while now and what you do is you punch some hole here according to a template then you can put your seedling with the sponge over the hole and that's it because we try to simplify things without using the the small what you call bucket you know usually aquaponic professional they usually like to use a bucket to put inside the hole so in that way we save i mean we we cut down one procedure of using the bucket right okay so if you i think mr cool is talking about that one the one with the hose oh you wanna hear how okay so typically in a in a company system holes are caught and they put what we call a net pot in there and then you put your medium there you plant the ceiling stairs so mr cool has taken away the step and put the wool straight into the into this foam and this foam is high density it doesn't absorb water okay i have used the white foam before and over time it will take in water and it will just start to have lose its buoyancy and sink so this is a a very good material for use in aquaponics and it costs a 10 10 ringgit something about 16 ringgit per piece which i think is actually quite a good value okay okay so this is an insulator used in winter countries and is now used repurposed for aquaponics okay now let's look at the plant section this is some serious wall of vegetables here and we'll let mr quick explain how how it's grown okay so this is what we call the aeroponic system whereby the water with nutrients are spraying onto the root of the vegetable using sprinkles now you can choose a lot of sprinkles which has higher pressure and smaller what they call water drops but we simply use a simple sprinkler usually used for gardening irrigations and all that because of the cost saving and also for easy maintenance the way we look at this is if you come over here you can see the root is hanging over the air and it has advantages when your water sprinkler is stopped the root is exposed to the air which is plenty of then you will have time for it to expand and grow so compared to like the the the rough or the deep water whereby you always have to put some oxygen bubble for the root to grow healthily okay and also the way we choose this step is it gives you more production per per area per acreage of your space and it also is quite maintenance-free because you compare to other method like the deep water culture over time you have to clean the pond this one after the the harvesting you just reuse the board again do not without having to have too much of the maintenance okay mr cool just brought an important point here that plants roots actually require an aerobic condition usually when your plants are sick whether it's planted in soil or using hydroponic matter if your plants are sick it's very high chance that the root is suffering from oxygen deficiency and we have entered into an anaerobic zone and in that zone is where all the diseases happen okay and aeroponics aeroponics based on the is based on the principle that the roots are suspended in the mid-air and water are sprayed to it you can as mr says use a mist system or use an agricultural sprinkler the idea is is to wet the roots with nutrient water periodically and when it's not wetting the roots it's exposed to the air causing it to be saturated with oxygen and thereby preventing this dangerous anaerobic zone and and this aeroponic system is actually a development by nasa for their space exploration technology and uh it has not been adapted for civilian use so a lot of the in fact hydroponic has its origin by nasa okay it was originally developed for space exploration and a lot of the cutting-edge technology that we are using today is base is an offshoot of that project and and in this system uh let me see okay we can see the roots and it has a form of mats on on the board here and when it sprays we can see that all of them will get wet and this is just a ordinary agricultural sprinkler which is quite inexpensive and and very often in aquaponics uh your creative your creativity and your ideas is it is your limitation okay so uh this is a very good adaptation of the sprinkle system and and what what are we looking at what plants are this this is bok choy okay so the other reason why we do this way is for harvesting it is easy also for harvesting so this is the way we harvest okay if this is done we just pick up the foam board and here we go the whole board is standing straight up you don't you don't fall flat because the weight will break the foam but when you carry out straight fret uh straight like this then your veggie is ready for collection right so compared to other method if you have to do it whole by hole then your time is very consuming right [Applause] so this is how uh how we design the system so it's a it's a very convenient system it's almost like a factory lot system you can one board by one boat come out and then you replace it with a new new batch so and and having it like this still means you have access to every single plant you can basically if you're tall enough you can reach the top and this is for monitoring purposes also uh you can pluck out all the disease vegetables or with insects and you can you can have a glance uh your whole plant system okay and a good agriculture system will allow you to access all your crops um you don't have to you know jump through hoops to access it so this is a it's a good system to monitor your plants and also the idea is this is what we call a vertical farming system okay this vertical farming system i um has been developing for some time now the idea is by planting it in a shape like this we cut down the food prints okay uh the the major problem of a frame system is always the sunlight okay uh there are research that indicates that usually the growth will be uneven because of the sunlight exposure okay so this is one of the challenge of a frame system they how to overcome it is the way you arrange your farm according to the sunlight okay uh but overall even there are some variations it will all balance itself out okay so the uh this this is one of the research field of aquaponics is an a-frame system and i think this is my first time seeing a commercial farm using the a-frame system in malaysia the sprinkler is turn on now have a look [Applause] now here i have a packet of the tilapia feet extruded till i perfect um you will probably have the lecture on feed formulation later on in the course okay this crude protein is 28 crude fat four percent crude fiber six percent moisture twelve percent okay the ingredients are animal proteins plant proteins grains and grains by product fish oil phosphorus amino acids vitamins and minerals okay feeding guideline three to four percent body weight is two times frequency per day okay as we have talked um or we are going to talk about feed formulation the most important component is the protein and you can see that the ingredients are actually not very much okay unlike the the examples you have saw that with hundreds of ingredients this is actually very limited okay and this is by cargill one of the bigger fit management factor uh in malaysia and this is a flow floating type [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay so this is uh this is for jade perch and it's a 25 kilo bag it seems from in vietnamese yeah in vietnamese okay yeah but we can see the okay the protein here is actually a high protein feed 40 the moisture eleven percent and uh fat six percent ash 16 fiber phosphorus and lysine is one of the amino acids okay so these are the uh commercial feed that is used in many of the aquaculture operations and this one can also be used for snakehead the snakehead fish okay as we as i alluded to your heat formulation is one of them one of the more popular branches in aquaculture and it's very lucrative if you can formulate a very good fit okay this this structure that we're in is sometimes called a net house or a greenhouse uh the net is at the side the top is uh insulated it's a transparent insulation and it's a plastic film and this particular block that we see now is 0.1 acre approximately zero point one acre and uh i'll let mr cool tell you about the features of this greenhouse and the costing to build one like this okay so this is called the saw through type assault means you have a roof that look like a saw knife i mean the saw tooth all right so basically on the top you have a net which allows the hot air to release from from here if you build up a hot air in the middle of the day the hot air can go through the net okay so that's why it's it's more cooling compared to the one with the half moon right the half round of the roof which i mean competitively it will collect most of the hot air and trap inside the curve okay that's why uh you are able to build this uh roof uh which is a three meter from the from the ground and if you uh do this for typical half moon type you probably have the higher uh pillar so to the same concept and the same application is to make sure the hot air doesn't trap inside and harm your plunge [Applause] and the cost how much does it cost to build one of these okay so typically if you look at this it's around six six ringgit per square foot all the way to uh 10 ringgit per square foot it depends on what type and the functionality and some of the what you call it has the what you call automated shading system then will cost you more additional questions okay and this particular design here cost about 30 000 to build okay uh so 0.1 acre 30 000. okay and the material here the the mr cool has been telling me uses a thicker steel steel beam which is of a higher quality and mr coop was talking about the airflow there let me show you we know that hot air rises up and and the sawtooth design allow the air to let me see to escape one way to direct one way and to escape from the other roof here yeah okay hot air rises it is diverted by one roof and goes out the other roof here correct okay so the principle is hot air from this roof here goes up the oven is trapped there and it goes up the net that is not a plastic that is net that is vertically okay just like water flow from top to bottom hot air goes from hot air goes up always go up okay and and it's very important to keep the temperature cool uh especially in a net house or a greenhouse like this because we know that uh the dissolved oxygen is very dependent on air temperature the higher the air temperature the less oxygen is in store in the water and and it will drive the do down and if you are not careful it can have sudden mass mortality okay so in aquaculture operation especially for tropical aquaculture we must pay attention to the air temperature okay mr cool will now talk to us in detail about uh this bait here how to how he built this raceway bait and what are the materials he used okay initially uh we are thinking of uh doing uh concrete with the blc a bit and all these things but the cost is is too much so what we have done here is actually utilizing what we call the u-drain so this is typically on construction site or the roadside you use the u-drain to build the drainage system okay so this is actually a u-shaped drainage system and it has the depth of 1.5 meter the white also 1.5 meters so that way it's enough for you to to grow tilapia because tilapia usually from the surface and the bottom part you really don't want to to disturb it too much but when you have too short of the too shallow of the water sometimes the the bacteria of the bottom can get caught in the fish so that's why we want to build this thing quite deep deeper than typically typical way of going and and what uh what are this okay so this is called the hdb the high density poly something i forgot to do polyethylene so polyethylene uh material uh is basically once you lay down all the uterine and it's not it's not sealing so we have to put a layer of the hdpe so it saves the water i mean it contain the water and is is this reliable i mean does it leak does it ever break down yeah so during the installation you might find some small leaks we have to patch it but once uh the water is in and it will last uh according to the supplier minimum 10 years [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh i didn't realize it's so deep you see this exactly exactly okay so so this is quite a deep system okay uh usually raceways uh they are built shallower a bit but this is a deep system and that's why it's a hybrid between the raceway and the pond [Applause] okay and this is a huge how much does it cost to build one with this okay so to to build one of these the hdp's itself cost how much was it 18 000 i think per greenhouse and this costs i mean the construction work and services cost about 40 thousand [Applause] 40 000 for all of them no no for six of them for six of them yeah forty thousand for six bits yeah okay uh so it's about 16. so including the piping the pumps you know all the infrastructure work uh this greenhouse costs about 150 000 in total okay so uh those are interesting aquaponics 150 000 for one of these units okay and so here we have one thousand twelve thousand fish in the pond and if you successfully grown to the b size and you probably fetch about four tons and one tons is about seven thousand five hundred so one time harvest is about thirty plus thousand so to get back it will take few batch of the fish the investment okay so you have first-hand information from a commercial grower so let's look at other features of this one [Applause] okay we are now at this home section this is the air blower and uh there is a special feature with this air blower let mr cool tell you about it um tell us about this okay so this is a pressure gauge which is connected to some wires and it has a high pressure limit and low pressure limit so let's say if the pressure is dropping and you've got some leak somewhere in the line when the pressure drop and touches this needle the alarm will kick off so let's for the sake of the demonstration i show you i purposely move the things here the alarm is moving can you hear the alarm let me show you the other features if you got electricity cut off and also the pressure drop when i shut down the power basically to simulate when the electricity is cut off now you can hear the alarm is picked off so because this one is very critical for our pieces and if there's no attention given to the air and the pump is down all the fish will die because of lack of oxygen okay uh this is the lifeblood of the farm so this cannot fail so that's why we have this alert system in the event is dropped below a certain pressure or exceed a certain pressure we will hear this okay right now we are simulating a power cut and these are four kilowatt pumps high power pumps and uh that is powering the entire farm okay a nice view of the the green houses here uh how many greenhouse do we have uh nine okay there are nine greenhouses here so it's a it's a quite a good size operation here are they all in full operation or not yet no actually only uh five in operation we're building the sixth one and then three more on the top it's not operation yet so we see it in the process of building it the reason we have three uh level here because of the the control of the land and also by doing so we're utilizing the gravity for our water supply so later i can show you how how we design the water supply basically the water is taken from the tip well and it will store in the upper level and the water can flow down to the second level and the second level water flow down to the lowest level and when the lower level is full the sensor will send a signal to the valve the valve will close and the same happened to the middle level and the one on the top it has a sensor with the radio signal when it's full also it will send a signal to the pump stop pumping okay we have been talking about this multi-level uh system where water flow from the top to the bottom and uh this is uh done by engineers and so it involves a lot of advanced engineering here so we shall have a closer look at it yeah okay so uh this is one over there there is two tip wells for those of us of you who are unfamiliar with tilt wheels footballs are like well but it's in the tube form that goes straight down to the the water table and uh let let's hear from mr cool about this tip well so this this tillwell is about 60 foot down and it has a submersible pump which produce the i mean the uses the power about one horsepower both of them is the same and when it's turned on you will push the water out through this bike and all the way to my reservoir so this summer palm are able to push the water for 30 meter height so this is a high pressure pump but low volume so this is a different type of application because the water supply is important to us by doing so it provides the constant water supply for us without any worries so we need to build a automatic system over there whereby it has a radio receiver receiving the sensor signal from the reservoir and when the reservoir is full every few seconds or so i mean six seconds you will send a signal here so when it's full the signal is sent here and the pump will stop by itself so in a way this we don't need to intervene on and off this is run automatically okay uh in if you uh want to build your own recirculating system in a home aquarium you can do this by putting a float valve okay when your water level goes down you know the float valve will be turned on and the water will go in it's just like a toilet system but this is done using electronics so there is a sensor at the reservoir that if the water falls below a certain level it sends a signal to this wirelessly through a radio frequency and it he commands the pump to start pumping and thereby filling that water and this really takes a lot of work out of the farming operation so he doesn't have to worry about the water level at all it's always there and so so in a farm uh when you can automate certain system you should automate it now this is the germination area uh you can see it is it's very cute actually so these are actually sponge sometimes they use roku and sometimes they use sponge so this is this is a sponge and the thing about this is is uh it doesn't use chemical fertilizer it's use uh the fish water for germination yeah so for germination we do use fresh water but once you have the the two little leaf come out then we switch to uh using the the water from the from the aquapon to fertilize it otherwise uh you won't grow too green because the seed nutrient is used once it's germinated so you have to keep feeding keep keep moisturing it with uh with your nutrient water and the tricks of doing this is many people uh you know didn't see these details is that this sponge it's not fully wet this sponge is only three millimeter at the bottom is wet you just provide the moisture for the root not the whole plan okay so that's why this tray has hole in it okay it has hole the hose so basically we drain the water so if you soak with water then you're in trouble because the whole stem may be affected by water so this is the tricks the details you must know if you want to germinate this way the only place to wet is at the bottom of the sponge that's it if the whole sponge is wet your plant will be damaged after that yeah if if the whole sponge is wet uh you will encounter problems like root rot okay uh the and another reason for this thin layer is to encourage the roots to go down okay our roots are hydro-positive they seek out water so by limiting it to the bottom we we force them to go find their own water source okay and so these are details so that you will only know if you if you do it yourself yeah so some people using the led light during germination and we don't want to waste any energy that's why once the leaf has come out we usually expose this to the sun and uh we'll have to spray the nutrient water every now and then just to prevent it from drying out okay okay um a lot of people don't really um sometimes we can be too caught up with using technologies that use led lights and everything but we we fail to recognize actually sunlight is the best light for plant growing and this is a utilization of sunlight especially for tropics we have a lot of sunlight and we should use it and and led lights are good but for for countries that have less sunlight or have winter seasons it's good for those countries but for malaysia we should use sunlight this is how deep the raceway is it can it can actually be a swimming pool here okay if you put a strong enough time you can do a raceway for a human like a swimming pool and and this is the u-shaped uh drain drain thing that is used in and i was asking mr cool why can't we cement it straight away you know plaster it like your wall the wall in a house let's hear from mr cool why is that so okay number one this structure is not like the typical concrete with the steel structure and you concrete this is a lego piece one by one and you lay it down and you see this joint is actually uneven and once you have water inside the stresses will tend to push this out outwards so if you lay cement the cement joint between these things for over time it will cracks okay especially when you have water level different the stretches are different it will crack it will leaks so what we that's why we prefer to uh to do away with the hdpe okay so the the cracking of the the joints here and the the compression the cement on i suppose the movement of the soil uh will eventually cause it to crack if you cement it so they go with the hdpe option to to mitigate that risk okay so uh so it is a very deep system okay uh and one of this costs about 200 something ringgit one of this u-shape okay so it's not it's not cheap to construct until so it's 200 something for you and the other factor we we accounted for is this uh removable uh in a sense it because this land is rented from others if we are asked to leave to move to other place the pond can be removed [Music] yeah so so it's like this if you if you if you go the rental routes you have to design your system in such a way that you can take everything away when you leave the farm and this uh this is a u and this is the what we call cinder blocks right cinder blocks this is a it's like a sand break for a larger version [Applause] and this is the inlet no this is uh overflow outlet this is the outlets okay those of you who want to build a swimming pool you probably can build something like this this is the reservoir tanks and uh it has some sensors here uh let's ask mr cooper okay so this is what we call a water level sensor it basically is just a three cables the green one is providing the the both the current to the bottom and depending on which line the water is status the relay moves the other way on or off that's it so meaning that if the water level drop beyond this cable meaning the water is not enough and the signal will send to the radio to control the power on the tip well pump and when the water level touches the red line here the current went through the relay is flipped the other side and the pump is going to be off that's it uh basically this is a this is an off switch and this is the on switch and so when the water level falls below it it turns it on and that turns it off when it reaches that and and this is a wireless system that's the where the radio signal is sent to the to the tilt well we've seen uh just now okay so this cuts down the the wiring that you have to do yeah now we were up there in in that level here that's where the first entry of the water the the water from the tube well then from there it is uh transferred to this second level it is a stack step level the second level here and it's controlled by this valve here now this is an electromagnetic valve okay if you send a current to this system you can turn it on or turn it off depending on the model that you choose in this case normally this is closed so that means water does not flow through when there is a signal to it and electric currents it turns it on okay so again the tank is powered by the three sensors that we look at just now when the water is low it will send a signal to there to this valve here to transmit the water to the tank okay so this is a this is something you all should know about an electromagnetic valve okay if you look here look at here okay these are not mosquitoes again uh it lays eggs in the water and it produces what we know as blood worms okay the red the red worm that uh we i used to feed it to the fish as a conditioning food okay if you want to breed your fish uh bloodworms is one of the best uh live feed that you can use so this is not the aedes mosquito that is transmitting this is the blood the one that produces the blood worm and it's very common in areas that has a lot of high organic matter because the their larvae will usually make their pupae at the organic matter okay they will form this this lines here at the bottom and when it hatches you uh when it is in lavish stage it has this uh red blood color that's why it's called a blood worm okay if you observe the raceway here there is this uh center parts uh there is a there is a blue bucket it has a very special function uh let's hear from mr cool yeah this is uh our own design we used to call this artificial river but actually what it does is like if you if you didn't put this thing on the bubble will tend to flow in all directions and this half-cut drum is to make sure we force the bubble to when it lifts up to the surface it falls through it flow in one way so in the way that you create some current to the to the stream and also you pushes all the fish waste to one direction otherwise if you have feed waste from the other side without this it will be blocked here because the air bubble will tend to push back so in this way we make sure anything that we do the the current is going one way this is the purpose it's a current generator uh development mr cool himself okay the whole thumb is has airs applied so he's making use of the air supply here to push the currents and it's a very ingenious plan it's very it's a very nice design if you use the air bubble properly you even can do an air lifting pump without using electricity he's talking about the air lift system we shall cover that in the coming lectures [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] jackpots [Applause] okay this farm is culturing two different types of fish tilapia and jade perch we are looking at here and this is a very beautiful fish and we have a high fat content and um let's hear from mr cool what are the differences between what is his experience in culturing these two different kinds of fish okay jack perch uh requires uh warmer temperature water temperature a bit warmer around 25 to 30 celsius so it it's good for to vary fish and it has higher value and has as the doctors say it has high fat omega-3 this fish originally from australia and it has been what you call a great delicacy in the restaurant usually it takes about eight months to wear compared to tilapia which about takes about six months so also the feed also to grow these fish you need to provide them with higher protein value of the of the fish so that you can grow according to the country [Applause] okay so uh i remember when this fish was first introduced in malaysia everybody was calling it omega fish because of its fatty content like salmon and and uh so this is a higher value fish compared to tilapia and mr cool which is easier to cut at the latter order actually they are almost the same the jackfruit depending on the oxygen and and the what they call the temperature because jackpot is very sensitive to changes so ph temperature and also the the feed that you give them you must be very careful however the mortality rate of jackpots actually lower than the tilapia but tilapia can withstand uh wide range of the the parameter which is uh you know you will withstand let's say if you have ps you drop down to 6.3 it's fine even go up to also it's fine but for jackfruits if you water ps changes rapidly you will see their behaviors behave differently normally the good sign is they start to uh not eating they they are fasting or even you throw the pellet they won't eat then you have to watch out for some stresses they might be going to so yeah that is correct uh tilapia is generally considered a hardy fish so it's supposed to withstand a wide range of chemical changes the water chemistry changes ph ammonia and nitrate nitrite generally they are able to tolerate a wide range okay so jade perch is the most sensitive ones and what mr cool was saying is that he's actually added that you can actually use it as a what they say canary in the in a cold mine so if they are unusual you will know that uh your water parameter needs to be checked okay and uh so in his experience this is a um he has a lower mortality in his experience so again this fetches a higher value but it also requires a higher protein content feed which is also a higher cost any protein content as we have discussed is the one of the major cause in feed formulation mr cool should walk us through the the price that he sells x farm x farm means the the price that he the the money that he gets when the fish exits the farm x farm price this is known as uh let's tell us about the tilapia and jet perch okay uh tilapia now the pricing is quite uh on the higher side compared to before mco and right now the tilapia usually have four grade so a b c and c c which is a smaller one so a means anything above 800 gram which can fetch about 10 to 11 ringgit per kilo and then b you will get about 850 a kilo and then c you get about seven and a half and the cc which is the smallest one which is less than 600 gram you usually get about six and a half length per kilo now as for the jack perch actually the market is quite small because it's expensive and not many people know about this fish but x farm they usually take from us 26 per kilo so so we can see it's almost triple the price of tilapia the jade perch okay but again as mr cool says it's a it's a smaller market because it's not a very well-known fish yet but it's the salmon of a fresh water and so so these are the actual actual farm price that he gets when he sells the fish okay the research in aquaponics is it used to be thought that the fish can completely supply the nutrients for the plants and the plants can completely strip it away but the research has shown that this is very difficult to maintain and you will always end up with excess nutrients and in this farm all the ex the waste the excess nutrients are all funneled to this uh setting tank the final setting tank here which again is submerged some each gate is subjected to further processing to break down the nutrients okay and this this is eventually goes to this bio filter now you are seeing this is what we call the k3 what you have seen in in my demonstration is a mini version of this the thing about this is it's supposed to be a neutral buoyancy material and when the when it's subjected to an air lift system like this it turns it around and around making it to be 100 in contact with the water and the reason for this final processing is is is it has a third output a third production system is a fertigation system uh if you see over there that is the fertigation that is uh going on um let's have a look at that in the current trend in aquaponics is what we call sometimes it's also known as a decoupled system where the where the where the water from the aquaponics is finally go through a final processing stage and usually it's used for soil farming or in this case fertigation a fertigation is a again a soils planting technique that requires the input of nutrient solution and in this case it's all the fish water that has been processed this is the soilless medium that is used its function is to mainly hold the roots and to sometimes lock the nutrient in place and this farm uses this coconut husk that has been grounded up into a finer powder like this and a right a burnt rice husk a kind of biochar and and what is the ratio that is okay we use one portion of right and two portions of coconut pea so the right house itself it has some nutrient also especially the potassium so in a way it gives him some some nutrient but not much however is a good medium to constraint i mean not consumed to contain the water so that you won't dry out totally but if you use only the coconut pea when the water is less it will be difficult to contain any water okay so this is the reason why we mix it and also the the right house is cheaper than the coco the the rice husk is this the hull of the of the rice that has been made into uh charcoal so it's and we have learned that charcoal or activated charcoal has this absorption property that can lock in certain nutrients so when it's in contact with the fish nutrients it also it acts like a sponge that locked the nutrient in place then the plant roots can on on demand take it out from the biochar and so so you cannot mix too much of a good thing okay that if you use hundred percent your plant there will be too much water in that and it's not good for it so two to one is the ratio now let's look at the plants there now this is the final output of the farm a chili fertigation system now in in malaysia almost all the chili production uh uses uh synthetic fertilizers for their production when we talk about fertigation uh they uses uh a b and all kinds of chemical fertilizer but this farm it uses the water from the fish so if it totally maximizes the the fish water usage and and what plants are we looking at mystical this is uh they call the four six one chili one chili and what do we do is uh after the mineralization all the water from the fish we reuse it however later stage when it's flowering and and the chili is coming out we might need to add a little bit of potassium and magnesium because and also calcium because uh chili's requires a lot of calcium magnesium potassium so the fish water itself the nutrient is not enough okay uh yeah so mr cool just alluded to the nutrient imbalance issue okay some some the fish sometimes fish water contains a lot of nutrients but sometimes it lacks certain elements that is essential for the plants and and especially in its flowering stage and fruiting stage you may need to supplement it with other synthetic fertilizers okay for those of you who are who are working in aquaponics and when it's your first try it's inevitable that you need to supplement because you just can't get the levels exactly right so mr cool was telling me this is a this is a more expensive method to to construct this system but it's a good method because it lifts the plants off the ground which is usually a source of a pest and one of this beam costs 18 ringgit around 18 right six meter 18 grit so you can do the mats here it will add up to your cost and some of them they just put this on the ground but then you will run the risk of your a pest problem and chilies can be susceptible to a lot of viruses and pests okay so we have reached the uh end of this farm tour uh mr quick kenny okay okay and this farm tour and i'll thank mr cool for giving us this wonderful opportunity to see an aquaponics farm in operation and the good news for you all is he is taking intern students okay and many of you watching here will be going for your internship uh next year and and he is where is this place where is this location this is uh we we call bastarijaya and next to unicel okay uh negotiates language is language so this is so uh he is taking intern students next year however if you want to come here you can either travel back to your home every day or if you're up for it you can stay in one of those containers over there so this container is used for storage and accommodation office and kitchen okay so yeah you're welcome here if you want to stay here but if you cannot tahan the a simple way of uh leaving then yeah you must travel back then okay so if if if you want the luxury way travel back to your home every day okay you can bring your tank and sleep on the top there also yeah you can come here too okay so this is a developing farm and and if you are into aquaculture is a very good opportunity for you to see how a farm is set up and to learn along the way this is one of the fastest way for you to learn okay so that is that's it for today's lecture and uh as usual i'll see you in the next lecture

Channel: Refugium Method

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Id: dtARYyPy_mU

Length: 72min 18sec (4338 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 02 2022