Yielding of aquaponics using probiotics to grow tomatoes with tilapia

Abstract

Aquaponics is a cutting-edge technology where plants and fish are grown together in a close-loop re-circulating system. It is not feasible to use growth-promoting agents, such as pharmaceutical antibiotics, with this biological and ecologically friendly technology to prevent or treat fish diseases. Examination of different growth booster substances became necessary because of this, and probiotics are one potential solution. The purpose of this experiment was to figure out the effect of gut probiotics, water probiotics and biofloc inputs in aquaponics to grow tilapia and tomato. Tilapia was fed with 29.40% protein containing feed with the supplement of gut probiotics (AQ-GT), water additive probiotic (AQ-WT), combination of probiotics-molasses-yeast (AQ-BF) and without any probiotic supplement (AQ) as control in media-based aquaponics. The investigation was incorporated for 75 days with triplicates of each treatment. Water quality, tilapia and tomato plant were sampled at 15-days interval. Moreover, matured tomatoes were harvested regularly. The findings showed that the treatments differed significantly in terms of electric conductivity, dissolved solids, calcium, sodium, potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, boron, copper, ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate concentration in tank water. The highest tomato flower was recorded in control (P < 0.01). On the other hand, the highest tomato and tilapia production were in AQ-BF (P < 0.01). The research findings revealed that biofloc technology (AQ-BF) significantly lower the feed conversion ratio and enhance the specific growth rate of tilapia than the other treatments. Moisture, crude protein, crude lipid, crude fiber, ash, and nitrogen free extract percentage in tilapia varied significantly among the treatments. Contrarily, statistical similarity among the treatments exists in terms of moisture, lipid, and ash content of tomato. The results indicate that, combination of biofloc technology with aquaponics is more viable for higher fish and vegetable production with favorable water quality than the other ways of probiotic inclusion in aquaponics.