A program emphasizing sustainable water-based agriculture enters its second decade at Lake Superior State University. What began as a testing ground for economical Atlantic salmon microculture has branched into something that leverages the skills of computer engineers in geneticists, all around the idea of suspending the country’s food supply. The goal of the LSSU Aquaculture Laboratory, launched in 2012, was to design a mini-farm that could grow salmon not on the scale of huge jobs based on inputs and fjords, but in 1,000-gallon bathtubs on each Mediterranean farm. – fish farming as a parallel concert. A pilot system revolved around the development of a large closed-loop tank where the only thing a farmer needed to add – apart from water and solar electricity – was feed for fish that had grown from brood into rings and then sold as merchandise to larger companies. “Our students won the Judges Choice Award from the Michigan Clean Energy Venture Challenge in 2014,” recalls Barbara Evans, an LSSU biology teacher and head advisor on aquaculture and hydroponics at LSSU. “We rolled out the cash prize from that to build a wreath (a type of outdoor greenhouse) with tanks for fish farming.” After building prototype systems and recognition, the initiative fell on the costly operation of running such a business, Evans said. Thus, instead of growing fish – aquaculture – the testing field now supports broader research into aquaponics, the applied science of growing consumable plants and vegetables in the water that preserves fish. It is not that the fish have been forgotten. More than a dozen koi fish are the basis of what plants feed on. Waste emitted by fish passes through the layers of bacteria that convert ammonia to nitrate fertilizer to feed the plants in beds with only water. After the water has accumulated nutrients, it circulates in a tank where it is cooled or heated before returning to the 1,000 gallon fish tank, where the cycle begins again. “What we also do now is called disconnected aquaponics. “We use fish waste as fertilizer for aquifers as well as for plants on the ground,” Evens said. “Right now, the cost of fertilizers exceeds the ceiling. “Fish waste is a more efficient, sustainable system.” Soil and water performance is important. Last summer we saw 30 kilos of soil-based cherry tomatoes. Water beds of squash, carrots, vegetables, sage, spring onions and parsnips had similar results. But the effort goes beyond the performance to the imagination. “Any aspect of aquaponics requires you to learn about plant and fish ecosystems,” Evans said. “Making people interested in this will promote food security for the country. It gives them some idea of what is going on in maintaining a food supply, other than going to the grocery store. This makes students engage and realize. It is a creative space “. Engineering students help with passive solar systems that keep water habitable for fish in the winter. They also work with programmable logic controllers – PLCs – to operate valves and monitor water quality, and even call someone when something goes wrong. The effort is led almost exclusively by the LSSU Aquaculture Club, which consists of students mainly of science. They were responsible for creating closed loop plants and fish tanks at the Crawford Hall of Science. The club also resurrected the wreath last summer, which has been dormant since the pandemic. It was outgoing president Cameron Mansell who expanded the coroner’s focus to include studies where fish provide exclusively tomato food. Another member of the club, Bobbi Jo Caskey, applied an advanced genetic sequence to conduct an inventory of microbes that produce fertilizer from fish waste. “Germs are the key, but no one knows what kind of bacteria do their job,” Evans said. “He took a water sample from our systems and made an internal identification of all the bacteria.” It turns out that there are thousands of species and subspecies. Caskey’s senior work mapped out how this mixture of bacteria changes with different plants and fish. What explains such a variety? “They come in with fish, some are airborne, maybe even students,” Evans suggested. “The next generation genetic sequence should identify unique species of bacteria in the soil that convert ammonia to nitrates.” Evans, Mansell and current club president Paxton Spencer invite everyone to follow the club on Facebook. They welcome public inquiries and hope to involve even more LSSU students. Look for “Superior AquaSystems LLC”.
