Search

Aquaponics have related food and nutrition security benefit that are important for this country (South Africa). The aim of this study was to apply aquaponics decision-making tool to provide potential aquaponics production data and information for South Africa. This study was designed as 2x3x3 factorial study giving 18 interactions. Because aquaponics are the production offish and crops concurrently, yield production had two levels- fish and crop, fish stocking density had three levels- low, optimum and higher and aquaponics scale of production had 3 levels- hobby, subsistence and commercial scale. The summary of data of aquaponics variables from the literature was used as optimum level, lower and higher levels were based on experimental design. Yield production (kg) of both fish and plants increased significantly (p<0.05) as fish stocking density was increased. In hobby scale, plants yield was higher than fish yield in all levels offish stocking density, the plant-fish yield (kg) was 40-33, 80-67 and 150-133, respectively. In subsistence scale, fish-plant yield (kg) was 240-200, 300-267 and 400-333, respectively. In commercial scale, fish-plant yield (kg) was 600-533, 1 100-1 000, 1 500-1 333, respectively. Daily fish feed increased significantly with increase in fish stocking density across all scale of aquaponics production (hobby