Substrates, Plants, and Their Combinations for Water Purification of Urban Household Aquaponics Systems

Yi-Han Wu, Qing-Feng Chen (), Jia-Nan Wang, Ting Liu and Wei-Yi Zhao
Additional contact information
Yi-Han Wu: College of Geography and Environment, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250358, China
Qing-Feng Chen: College of Geography and Environment, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250358, China
Jia-Nan Wang: College of Geography and Environment, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250358, China
Ting Liu: Shandong Analysis and Test Center, Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), Jinan 250014, China
Wei-Yi Zhao: College of Geography and Environment, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250358, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 16, 1-15

Abstract: To make full use of urban household balcony space, an urban aquaponics system for balconies was constructed to investigate the purification effects of four different substrates (volcanic stone, ceramic pellets, ceramic rings, and nanorods) and six plants (mung bean sprouts, hollow cabbage, water celery, lettuce, leek, and water chestnut) on fish culture wastewater. Through the determination of contaminants such as nitrogen and phosphorus and through the use of 16SrDNA sequencing technology, the substrate material and plant combinations with the best purification effects were screened. The results show that volcanic stone and nanorods have strong purification capacities. Compared to the other substrate types, there were more unique bacterial species on the surface of volcanic stone, among which amoeba species were the most dominant (92.42%). Among the six tested plant species, mung bean sprouts had the highest contribution to nitrogen uptake (94.96%), and water chestnut had the highest contribution to phosphorus uptake at 12.07%. Finally, the combination of nanorods and water celery was the best at purifying the wastewater. This study provides a theoretical basis and new ideas for the construction of urban aquaponics systems on balconies, which will help to achieve green farming and the efficient utilization of water resources.

Keywords: aquaponics; urban households; substrate materials; aquatic plants; water purification; microbes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/16/10276/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/16/10276/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:16:p:10276-:d:891585

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().