[slideshow]

This semester’s Aquaponics team is now five weeks into our feed experiment testing the viability of fish silage as food for our Tilapia.  Our team consists of the students, Grace,Griffin, Helen, Marius, Alex, AJ, and our advisors, Josh and Ashley. Aquaponics is a system that recirculates fish waste into a usable substance in which we can use to grow vegetables to eat here at The Island School. In our experiment, we are attempting to change the diet of the Tilapia that provide us with the waste that grows our food. The commercial food that we are currently using is not environmentally friendly because it travels long distances to get to The Island School and it has nonspecific animal products in it, which could include things like wild-caught fish. Trading wild for farmed fish doesn’t make a lot of sense for an organization dedicated to marine conservation. Every week we team up to weigh, and measure 137 of our juvenile tilapia to see if they are growing when we give them silage from the cobia our aquaculture program raises to feed the school. If our experiment is successful we will be feeding them a more sustainable feed made out of the homemade silage, and our Aquaponics system will be even more efficient than it is today!