Entry 3: Meeting with Mentor (1)

23 February 2012

Today we had a meeting with our mentor discussing about our previously mentioned ideas. We decided to work on the integrating the external large setups into our houses.

This is because of the feasibility of the two ideas. The idea of revamping the large outdoor setup was just not too feasible due to the lack of technical expertise and that it will not be able to aid anyone, because it would require for someone to own a moderate size piece of land just for that system to operate. As compared to that of the indoor aquaponics, it will definitely be much more feasible as we need to come up with the designs, and the technical part of it is pretty simple, and yet able to benefit much more people as it will be integrated into their households and this idea of an indoor aquaponics helps to prevent dengue too as the water is in constant motion.

After this meeting, we needed to think of various ideas and designs regarding the indoor aquaponics as well as how this will work. Along with the benefits of each idea and design as well as how aesthetically pleasing it is, we will then decide on which design to work on, which will therefore be our prototypes. This will actually be based on our basic idea, which we have actually done up some time ago for a green fair.

Here is a picture of our basic idea:

During this session, we came up with the idea for one of the possible prototypes. It was actually somewhat similar to this idea, except much more aesthetically pleasing and uses much lesser space, whereby the tray will be attached to the fish tank directly, with our own invented support holder for the tank to the tray. This will actually maybe become one of our eventual decided prototype.

Here is a picture of how the prototype could actually look like:

Beyond this idea, we would need to continue doing our work and think of various other designs and ideas before selecting the best during our project meeting with our mentor.

Entry 2: Invention Ideas

17 February 2012

Since we were already presented with a faulty setup in the large aquaponics setup within the school, close to the science lab, we were allowed to come up with our own idea as to what we actually wanted to do. We camp up with two ideas.

Our first idea was to actually come up with a brand new outdoor aquaponics system, by changing around the various parts of the faulty system, such as replacing the position of the fish tank (nutrients provider), making adjustments to the position of pipes, drainage of water as well as how water is distributed to the plants.

Our second idea was to integrate this external large aquaponics setup that could only be setup in plots of land with huge spaces into our modern houses, allowing it to integrate both fish tanks as well as mini plant gardens. Whereby this fish tanks will then become the nutrient provider to the plant garden.

Issues faced regarding the first idea include:

How were we going to be able to cut the plastic parts needed?

Since we did not know much about how to work around with the plumbing would it actually be even possible for us to change the positions of the pipe and work around with the drainage system?

What were the benefits as well as the feasibility of this idea?

Issues faced regarding the second idea include:

How were we going to make it aesthetically pleasing?

How will this actually work out and its feasibility?

We then came to a conclusion of meeting up with our mentor for a discussion before deciding on which idea to work on.

Entry 1: Category to Enter

3rd February 2012

A few weeks ago, our group had decided to do a project on aquaponics due to the exposure we had on it in Secondary 2 and the fact that it had potential in several project categories. However, due to the broad diversity of ideas we formulated with aquaponics, we had not chosen a specific category to enter our project in yet.

The first project category that the group was contemplating to join was the Service Learning Project. In the previous meeting, we had decided that we could introduce and integrate aquaponics to large scale farming industries nowadays and work towards more environmentally friendly methods of carrying out industrial activities. At the same time, we could, with our set up, also produce organic vegetables to be donated to the poor, thus reaching out to the less fortunate in our community. The purposes that we had in the project fulfilled the criteria of Service Learning, thus it was one of the most viable options we had. However, there were several problems that we only realised today. First, there are limited farming areas in Singapore. Thus, if we wanted the project to be large scale, we had to focus on promoting the system overseas, which could be troublesome and difficult to accomplish due to the short timeframe we had. Next, the already short timeframe also amounted to a low amount of food supplies that we could produce; As each vegetable took about 2-3 months to grow, with our limited number of set ups, we would not be able to produce enough food to serve the community. In fact, our contributions in this sector would more or less become negligible. Another lingering problem was that one of the aquaponics set-ups we had was faulty and water was unable to flow through the system smoothly, thus leading to the inability to use it. Thus, we had no choice but to look towards an alternative project.

Even though we shunned the idea of inventing a new prototype at first, the fact that there was a faulty aquaponics system gave us an idea – if we were able to come up with a successful prototype that would not only be able to replace the faulty system but also achieve other uses, then it would fufill the criteria for the Inventions Category! During the meeting, we decided to create a hydroponics system that would not only help to promote environmental friendliness The recent interests that people have expressed in aquaponics systems also spurred us to go deeper and explore further. Through all these ideas, we finally decided:

We were going to embark on an aquaponics project in the Inventions Category!