US (VA): VHCC’s greenhouse gets a little bigger with their new fishy addition
One new crop this past year was not a plant at all, but tilapia, a freshwater fish. There are about 40 in small ponds inside the greenhouse, which are part of an aquaponics system, said Ben Casteel, who started as a horticulture instructor this past semester.
That means the fish live in water that is filtered through a variety of plants and back into the fish pond. The plants absorb the nutrients from the fish waste and are fertilized while they filter, he said.
“All we provide is the fish food, and eventually, we hope to grow our own fish food,” he said, adding that tilapia like to eat certain aquatic plants like duckweed.
He said there were 100 fish earlier this year, but once they grew to full size, most were eaten. He said he’s considering getting a license to sell the fingerlings, or juvenile fish, to area aquaponics stores and to local high schools, which he said are seeing a resurgence in horticulture programs.
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