Week 5: Aquaponics: feed, fish and operating conditions
Sizing a system from its feed, and finding out what you are allowed to keep in it.
Aquaponics is sized from the feed, not from the fish and not from the plants: the FAO feed-rate ratio sets grow-bed area from daily feed input, and stocking density follows. That makes it the tidiest arithmetic in the course and also the piece most exposed to things the model cannot see. Which species you may keep at all is a question of jurisdiction rather than temperature, and the answer differs across the five homes. Adelaide leads the worked example. The week also names the operating conditions a running system has to hold — temperature band, pH, alkalinity — because those are what a measurement programme would have to watch, and what a troubleshooting log will later show going wrong. Protein counted from fish is reported net of imported feed, every time.
This week
- Lecture, 22 March 2027
- Which fish you may keep, and for how many monthsWeek 5 — feed-rate ratios, stocking limits and seasonal species rotation, plus the jurisdiction question the thermal model cannot see
- Tutorial, 25 March 2027
- Species, months and the approval you needWeek 5 tutorial — size the fish and bed pair from the feed-rate ratio, then find out what your client's jurisdiction actually requires before keeping anything
- Assessed, due 25 March 2027
- Quiz 2: Insects, aquaponics and the limits of the loop4 % of the course mark. Week 5 — bioconversion arithmetic, the feed-rate ratio, and telling a course design rule from a legal requirement
- Worked example
- AdelaideThe Rossis' home leads this week, because its climate makes this subsystem hard. All five homes are compared on the lecture page.
What you leave with
A grow bed sized from the feed-rate ratio, a species choice with its temperature band, and the approval pathway named.
You have finished the tutorial when all of this is true, and you can tell without asking anyone:
- your grow bed is sized from the feed-rate ratio and your stocking density is inside the FAO limit
- your species choice names its temperature band and the source of that band
- you have identified the approval pathway for that species in your site's jurisdiction, with the instrument named
- counted fish protein is reported net of imported feed
- the operating conditions the system must hold are written down with their units
Assignment milestone
Quiz 2 (4 %), on weeks 4–5.
Where this sits
You meet the client and work through each candidate system — garden, mushrooms, insects, fish, preservation — far enough to know what it needs and what would have to be measured before anyone spent money on it. Every calculation in these weeks is a scoping estimate on published figures, not a claim about this house.
Expected effort
About 8 hours this week: 2 h lecture and notes, 2 h tutorial, 1 h preparation and quiz, 3 h assignment 1. The assignment hours go into: Biological operating conditions added as measurement rows.
A planning guide from the semester planner, not a requirement and not a measurement of anyone. Tutorial submission sits inside the tutorial hours and the quiz inside preparation; neither is counted twice.