18-05-2025
Studying Aquaponics: Program accepted in national initiative
COVENTRY — Several years ago, a student built a greenhouse dome from scratch for his senior project. Almost 10 years later, the project led to the creation of an aquaponics program, in which more and more students are taking an interest in.
The Aquaponics class was born after Alex Bohr's independent study project, which he did back in 2017 when he was a student at CHS. His project consisted of creating an aquaponics dome. The school then created a program and used the dome to grow plants using aquaponics technique.
This technique consists of using fish culture as a natural fertilizer to grow plants without using soil. This benefits both the fish culture and the plants growing industry, as plants use fishes' waist nutriment to grow and filter the water that returns to the fish.
The program was recently officially accepted into the American Heart Association's Teaching Gardens Network, which is a national initiative that supports school gardening and agricultural programs.
To join, the school had to fill out an online application, detailing the program and the number of students that are participating, as well as the garden's dimensions. Being part of the AHA is a good opportunity to get grants for the class or scholarships for students. They also have access to studying materials like lesson plans, lab activities and different curriculum.
Jacob Paciotti is the teacher who is now in charge of this class, which occurs every semester. There, the students learn how to run both a hydroponics system – which means there are no fish involved, but just chemicals in the water – and an aquaponics system, which uses fish.
'In the dome itself, there's two systems. There's one that is aquaponics with the fish living there,' he said. 'And there's one that's hydroponics as a drip system that kind of drips the nutrient rich water into the actual growing medium.'
As part of the curriculum, Paciotti covers plant science and botany. He said students learn about the anatomy and the physiology of plants, the growing techniques both in the soil and not in the soil. They also learn about the kind of nutrients plants need, but also how much light, space, oxygen and carbon dioxide they require.
'They go over things like the intensity of sunlight, what types of artificial lighting to use, growing seasons, hardiness, that kind of stuff, and then they apply that outside,' he said. 'On our workdays, they'll go outside, either work in the garden patches and start going in and planting this thing from seed, or they'll start inside with our aquaponics setup.'
Some of the things students grow are crops that are then used by the school cafeteria once the produce is ready to harvest. Paciotti said they supply about 25% of all the produce used in the cafeteria.
Since the class started, students' interest keeps growing, with a high enrollment. They have decided to move the class to a full course next year, with 45 students attending. Becoming a full course will allow Paciotti to add topics in the curriculum, like plant ecology, plant diversity, more traditional botany, but also sustainable agriculture.
Paciotti believes this class attracts more students because it is different from the traditional science classes that are offered.
'The other ones are focused more on the cell side of things, the human body. This one here kind of incorporates both environmental sciences, but also traditional botany and biology,' he said. 'And I think it's applicable more so after high school and some other disciplines, thinking about how this applies.'
Many students are currently living on a farm, and with the aquaponics class, they can learn a lot of things that they can apply directly into their homes. For those who do not live on a farm, they still learn how to grow their own crops, which can benefit them personally and professionally.
'Different plant companies are here growing plants and they need workers that go out there and work, so this provides skills that are more hands-on than the traditional class,' Paciotti said. 'And since they are outside for many classes in a row, it kind of gives them that real world experience while still being in high school.'
The feedback he received from students is positive. They like to be able to use their hands and work on the plants, something they usually have no experience with.
'It gets them outside in the dirt, in the water, working with both the fish and the plants and kind of giving them almost an escape from the traditional classroom setting,' he said.
Some of Paciotti's goals for the next few years would be to expand how much produce is going to the cafeteria, going from 25% to a third of what they use.
The original dome is deteriorating, so he is hoping to replace it by a full-size greenhouse with a similar type of set up. He is currently applying for a grant to get two indoor grow towers that use the nutrient film technique.
'It's kind of a hydroponic system that uses thin layers of water versus the entire tank down there,' he said. 'They are AI equipped, so the students can monitor from their phones and tablets how the plants are operating.'
This would allow students to see in real time the water and the nutrients level and watch the overall growth of the plant.
'Agriculture's been around for a couple thousand years, so it's kind of bringing the new technology into old technology,' he said.
