A recent study related to aquaponics has shown that hydroponic lettuce grown in aquaculture-derived supplemented water grew significantly better than lettuce grown in a conventional hydroponic system. The principal objective of this study was to verify this finding in a larger setup. Even though the aquaculture water that was added to the aquaculture-based hydroponic system contained relatively high amounts of sodium, we were still able to observe an enhanced growth performance of the lettuce in that system compared to the lettuce grown in the conventional hydroponic nutrient solution. The lettuce final fresh weight was 7.9%, and its final dry weight even 33.2% higher than the one of the hydroponic control.
Keywords: Aquaponics; Decoupled aquaponics; Horticulture; Hydroponics; Integrated aquaculture; Salt accumulation.