Effect of Different Fish Diets on Mustard Production in Aquaponic System Associated With Tilapia Culture

The nutrition of fish or fish feed requires an expensive cost in the farming production. Expensive and limited source of the main ingredient in fish feed, such as fish meal leads to the requirement of alternative protein source in fish diet. In addition, waste pollution from aquaculture activity is one of the biggest contributions to environmental pollution. Integrated farming such as aquaponic could be the best solution to overcome these problems. Hence, this research was conducted to investigate the effect of two types of fish diet towards both tilapia and mustard growth performance within the recirculation nutrients in designed aquaponic system. Sixty tilapias were divided into two diet groups with three replicates namely, Treatment 1 which represented diet of solely commercial pellet and Treatment 2 which represented diet of commercial pellet associated with Azolla pinnata. Approximately 72 mustard seeds were germinated using peat moss as soilless medium. Aquaponic aquarium design was installed manually using pipes, water pump and aerators. Tilapia culture and mustard culture with hydroponic floating raft were prepared within two separate aquariums which connected vertically from each other based on aquaponic aquarium design. Growth performance of mustard were observed based on height, number of leaf and weight after harvest while tilapia weight as well as water parameter were monitored once a week throughout 15 weeks of culture. The findings showed Treatment 1 gave better mustard growth performance compared to Treatment 2 based on mustard weight after harvest, where Treatment 1 had average weight of 7.13 ± 0.22 g while Treatment 2 produced smaller size with average weight of 1.68 ± 0.04 g. Statistically, the findings showed significance difference (p<0.05) between both groups, with Treatment 1 showed better performance than Treatment 2. The best diet for tilapia culture in aquaponic system was diet with solely commercial pellet. Hence, type of fish diet in aquaponic had really influenced the performance of both plant and fish.