At my high school, a group of students built a large aquaponics garden in 2016. In my senior year of high school, I revamped the system and got it back up and running. We grew minnows, tilapia, lettuce, beets, radishes, herbs, tomatoes, pumpkins, and other experiments with different seeds. As club leader, I had to modify the system to reduce leaks and make things more efficient. I also led the research to purchase seeds and fish, and we met weekly and devised different experiments that we wanted to try with the system. For example, around Halloween, we germinated pumpkin seeds and started them in the dirt. Then we transferred it to the clay pellet bed, and the pumpkins grew very well. However, we had to figure out that we would have to manually pollinate the pumpkin plants so that fruits would develop. We also ended the year with many more minnows than we started with, and our tilapia were about twice the size but not big enough to eat, so they spent the summer in a pond and are back in the system this year.
