Abstract
Aquaculture activities often lead to environmental deterioration due to discharges of nutrient-rich wastewater without treatments. The present study aimed to develop a bio-green floating system (BFAS) to utilize excess nutrients, improve water quality, enhance plant and fish production, and minimize threats of aquaculture effluents. The floating raft system was constructed using water spinach integrated with a substrate (lava rock) to allow the development of biofilm communities, which together with the plants, improved the water quality by nutrient sequestration. Three treatments were employed for 105 days: (1) zero water exchange without BFAS (T1-NCT); (2) water exchange at 5-day intervals without BFAS (T2-PCT); (3) zero water exchange with BFAS (T3-BFAS). Total ammonia removal was significantly (p < 0.05) higher (92.4 ± 1.2%) in T3-BFAS compared to T2-PCT (89.2 ± 0.5%). The percent removal of other nutrients such as unionized ammonia, nitrite, and soluble reactive phosphorus was significantly (p < 0.05) higher in T3-BFAS compared to T2-PCT and the control. The T3-BFAS showed a significantly (p < 0.05) lower feed conversion ratio (FCR, 1.16 ± 0.05), higher (p < 0.05) specific growth rate (SGR, 3.58 ± 0.03), and better health indicators (hemato-biochemistry characteristics) compared to the other treatments. Heavy metals in T3-BFAS were significantly lower (p < 0.05) than the control and were significantly higher in roots than in the water. The findings suggested that the simple newly developed energy-free BFAS could enhance water quality, improve fish health, and optimize fish production in an aquaculture system without water exchange.
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Data Availability
The datasets generated or analyzed during this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to the thank the UPM-SEARCA (Universiti Putra Malaysia-The Southeast Asian Regional Centre for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture for awarding the PhD Fellowship Grant to Arissara SOPAWONG. PhD Fellowship UPM-SEARCA to Arissara Sopawong is duly acknowledged. The authors like to thank the staff of the Department of Aquaculture, Faculty of Agriculture, and the Laboratory of Aquatic Animal Health and Therapeutics, Institute of Bioscience, UPM, for their technical support.
Funding
This work was supported by Putra Grant No: 9687902, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia for SATREPS-COSMOS Matching Grant, and JICA-JST SATREPS-COSMOS (JPMJSA 1509) grant. This study was sponsored by UPM-SEARCA grant, Putra Grant No: 9687902 and SATREPS-COSMOS Matching Grant, and JICA-JST (SATREPS-COSMOS JPMJSA 1509).
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Arissara Sopawong: conceptualization, validation, methodology, investigation, visualization, formal analysis, original draft, review and editing. Fatimah Md Yusoff: conceptualization, methodology, visualization, review and editing, supervision, resources, project administration, funding acquisition. Muta Harah Zakaria and Amalia Mohd Hashim: writing – review and editing, supervision. Yam Sim Khaw: writing – review and editing. Md Shirajum Monir: writing – review and editing, methodology, formal analysis.
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Sopawong, A., Yusoff, F.M., Zakaria, M.H. et al. Development of a bio-green floating system (BFAS) for the improvement of water quality, fish health, and aquaculture production. Aquacult Int 32, 1101–1118 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10499-023-01207-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10499-023-01207-3