Analysis of engineering factors on growth performance and water quality of indoor aquaponics of tilapia and coriander

Indoor farming has been found to be a solution to solve sustainability of food resources especially as the world are in need of higher demand of food production. However, not much study has been conducted to study the successful of indoor farming in tropical climates like Malaysia. The study explores the impact of hydroponic grower setups and light intensity on growth and performance of plants and fish for 14 weeks. Two experiments are conducted: Set A examines four aquaponics systems (raft, media-based, horizontal NFT, vertical NFT) with LED grow lights, while Set B evaluates different photosynthetic photon flux densities (PPFD) in a standardized raft system (20, 35, 45, 55 µmol/s·m2). Data collection focuses on coriander height, leaf number, tilapia weight gain alongside water quality analysis (pH, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, dissolved oxygen). Set A results indicate superior performance of the rafting system, while in Set B, the highest yield is from the light intensity setting with PPFD of 35 µmol/s/m2. It’s evident that higher PPFD levels correspond to increased growth rates, however, due to the heat emitted by the light source, it infers the growth of coriander plant. Thus, future work will suggest in utilizing heat removal from the hydroponic unit.