Interested in helping make food more sustainable? Like gardening? Like fish swimming in an aquarium or on your dinner plate? Want to engineer green technology? Want to make a difference in your community? Then join the University of Waterloo Aquaponics (UWAQ) Student Team!
Aquaponics is a sustainable food production system that combines fish and plants together in a stable symbiotic relationship. The plants and fish are held in two different tanks, with the water cycling around, so that the fish’s waste fertilizes the plants, and the plants clean the fish’s water. This creates a highly efficient food production system, which requires no pesticides or artificial fertilizer, and wastes very little water and nutrients.
UW Aquaponics sees itself as a team exploring the technology of Aquaponics, and trying to get others in the community involved with it as well. We design, build and maintain our own Aquaponics systems, having to consider factors from structural safety, to fluid flow, to water quality, to sensors and controls. We also will run events trying to get others within the university, in other universities and the outside community into Aquaponics. As can be expected, we attract people from across all departments and faculties, and so you will have the opportunity to work many different people with many different backgrounds.
Look out for upcoming UW Aquaponics projects, including the building and initialization of our second system, our upcoming competition, and our UWAQ workshop in March!
If you are interested in learning more about us, check out our website at aquaponics.uwaterloo.ca or contact us via email at uwaquaponics@gmail.com.
Leave a Reply