Aquaponic Gardening

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THE FIRST GREAT MESA COMMUNITY COLLEGE PRAWN HARVEST PT. 2

November 2nd, 2017, Stocked on August 7th with thanks to Mark Bogart of Valley Aquaponics, students in the fall 2017 section of AGS-166 aquaponics at Mesa Community College have gotten to work with the unique, delicious but challenging Giant Freshwater Prawn Macrobrachium rosenbergii in two Deep Water Culture (DWC) systems.

Placed in outside in two (2) unheated DWC grow bed the water is starting to get cold (71oF), so time to harvest the prawns see how they have done. The following is the record of harvesting the Self Contained Deep Water Aquaponics system (S-CAp). It is not as large as the classic DWC (32 ft2 grow bed vs 40 ft2 so fewer prawns but at first glance, the recovered animals appear to be larger. PS: THE PHOTO OF THE ADULT GIANT PRAWN BELOW WAS PROVIDED TO DEMONSTRATE HOW BIG THEY CAN GET. WE DID NOT GROW IT HERE AT MCC.

We learned a lot that is not in the literature including insights on how many prawns can be stocked, what roots they will eat, what roots they will not eat, how to nearly stop their root consumption and began to develop a new sustainable food for prawns that is superior to the fish pellets they normally get. All of this information will be reported at the next World Aquaculture Society meeting, February 18, 2018 in Las Vegas Nevada. Link to conference:  http://bit.ly/2ol7ler

S-CAp system.

Clearing the plants to make way for the prawn harvest harvest.

Counting and weighing the prawns.

An almost eating size 22 count/22 to a pound male prawn. If we had another couple of months they would have been ready to eat of 10-12 count. 

Adult prawn from Bangladesh (NOT MCC) to demonstrate how big Macrobrachium rosenbergii can actually get. 

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