Increasing nitrification efficiency of an aquaponic system to cultivate cold water fish in Canada

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In this project, an aquaponics system purchased from U.S. will be improved to increase nitrification efficiency**for the cultivation of cold water fish in Montreal area, Canada. This aquaponic system is environmental**friendly without releasing any fish wastewater which is fully utilized by the plants in a separate hydroponic**tank. However, the existing aquaponic facility is mainly produced in the United States for warm water fish (i.e.**tilapia) at approximately 25 °C. The Aqua Bord-du-lac, a local company based in Montreal area, plans to**adopt this system for cold water fish (i.e. trout) cultivation in Canada. Two sets of aquaponic facilities were**purchased by Aqua Bord-du-lac and the experiment has started in January 2018.**Preliminary results has shown that the water temperature for cold water fish has to be controlled below 16**°C under which the ammonium produced by the fish can not be efficiently converted to nitrate. Ammonium**is toxic to fish and has caused death of fish. The biofilter of the equipment does not function well in converting**ammonium to nitrate under this cold temperature. Therefore the objective of this research is to improve the**nitrification efficiency of this aquaponic system for cold water fish cultivation.**The improvement of this system would first benefit the business of the Montreal local producer Aqua**Bord-du-lac who plans to invest million dollars to expand this aquaponic industry. It would also secondly**benefit the aquaculture industry in Canada for in-door cold water cultivation. This closed system would also**significant contribute to environmental protection in Canada.**Our research group consists of Dr. Zhiming Qi, Associate Professor at McGill specialized in water quality**management, and a Ph.D. student, Kevin Kelly, a Postdoctoral Research Associate Dr. Qianjing Jiang.