After a full year of work and many hours spent improving upon and iterating our system, we have finally produced an aquaponics system that actually nurtures both fish and plants! We've grown lettuce, basil, and spinach that have all provided a comfortable living environment for nine goldfish. We take pride in the ultimate success of our project, and we hope to continue improving the system next year. We'll post something soon about the next steps for the Aquaponics Project here at St. John's. Thank you for reading.

- Mattheus
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I wanted to provide a summary of the steps we took over the course of a few weeks in March to provide insight into our experimental procedure. Through changing specific variables each week and adjusting levels of different apparatuses, we were able to better understand what goes into the design of an efficient aquaponics system. 

3/1/17:

• turned off the grow light to see effect on plants (getting too much sunlight?)
• lost one of the 10 fish
• decreased amount of food for the fish (b/c they were getting too much)
• ran pH tests with pH strips

3/8/17:

• positioned pump lower down in basin to account for decreased volume of water (lost to evaporation)
• ran first pH test with more advanced equipment and logged data
• changed water cycle to 30 min on and 2.5 hrs off

3/13/17

• ran pH tests on dechlorinated water and fish tank
• stirred water and repositioned water pumps
• plants looking much better with new water cycle
• basil and spinach seeds planted in petri dishes, brownie, and soil pots
• grow light moved to underneath system to nurture seeds in petri dishes

3/20/17

• seedlings were dry, so we re-moistened them and put them back under the grow light
• ran pH test, although calibration did not work well, so results were likely skewed

- Mattheus

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