Welcome to our new Video Interview series “Meet the P3 Team”! We are excited for this new project and we will be holding interviews with the p3-Team members, learning more about them, their contribution here at p3 and how they look to make a statement for a sustainable world.

Our host on our first Interview is Supaki, from Kenya and our Videographer is Trym, from Sweden. Both are UWC students, serving one year every Wednesday morning here at p3! They’ve done a wonderful job, to bring you some insight into p3, video from the Interview coming soon!

Our first interview features Fabian. Fabian, known around here as Fabi. He is part of the Aquaponics/Hydroponic team. This is how the interview went. Enjoy!

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Supaki: Hello everyone, thank you for joining us and tuning in today. My name is Supaki and I’m here today with Fabian, who is 25 years old and has been at p3 for about 6 months now. This will be our first interview among our interview series “Meet the P3 Team” where we will talk to different members of the team and learn how they work here at p3, what they do and what they are doing to create a sustainable world. Hello Fabian, it’s nice to meet you today. I would like you to tell us more about yourself and tell us what you do here at P3?

Fabian: Thank you, nice to meet you Supaki. At the moment I’m a Masters student in Hydrology at the Ludwigs University of Freiburg and I’m working as a trainee for P3. My tasks at P3 are doing data management and monitoring of all the planned processes for example, fertiliser and water usages for our plant systems

Supaki: You mentioned that you’re a university student, if I’m right, so how do you manage to balance between your studies at the university and your work here at P3?

Fabian: Well, sometimes it’s not really that easy because my Masters is very time consuming but here at P3 I’m very flexible and everyone usually helps each other out so we always find a solution. Sometimes I work from home, sometimes I work at night, and sometimes I can work at the usual business times here at P3, so that’s pretty nice as I have a lot of flexibility and freedom to work whenever I can work most efficient.

Supaki: And what do you enjoy most at P3?

Fabian: Definitely all the friendly and dynamic people and the open business structure where everybody helps and learns from each other because there’s so many different qualifications that are working on the same projects together and that’s really awesome.

Supaki: That’s really interesting qualities I’m hearing about P3. I’ve heard that you are part of the aquaponics/hydroponic team. What is aquaponics? Can you give us more details?

Fabian: Aquaponics is a combination of aquaculture and hydroponic, so farming fish and producing plants. Basically you feed the fish and the fish produce excrements and these excrements are converted by microorganisms to plant available nutrients and the plants absorb the nutrients and filter the water by doing so. So aquaponics is like a balanced ecosystem where each part, plants, the fish and microorganisms rely on each other. For example, if the plants wouldn’t absorb the nutrition the fish would die because the nutrition are toxic to the fish and if the fish wouldn’t produce the excrements then the plants would starve because they wouldn’t have any nutrition.

Supaki: Sounds like a complicated system. What I’m wondering is how was it to develop such a process and what did it take? How was it like to develop this process?

Fabian: The system of aquaponics Is really not new, it’s a very old technique, and if you are aware of all the important parameters of the water quality and measure them often enough it is really not complicated actually because the system is pretty much self-running.

Supaki: Would you like to expound on what you meant by water components?

Fabian: Well there are some nutrients, for example, ammonia which are very toxic to the fish and dangerous so you have to monitor them and see if the concentrations get close to the thresholds. If you are aware of those thresholds, then you have certain techniques to make the system better.

Supaki: What was the process like of developing the aquaponics system here at p3?

Fabian: The process was for us here at p3 to learn how the aquaponics system runs and what are the parameters and variables and what we have to look for and maybe if you look in the future to plan a bigger system because this one (points behind) is just a prototype for us to exercise and learn and maybe one day we’ll have more experience we can build a bigger system or we can teach other people to build those systems.

Supaki: How far have you gone with the research and what are your next steps for this prototype?

Fabian: well we are just at the beginning and you can see the plans are very small inside an aquarium and also up there so it’s just only a few weeks old so the process will just be collecting data and seeing how changes on the system, if you change any parameters, how they change the system. For example, the next step we are trying to use another food for the fish because now we are just using some convenient fish food but later on we want to switch to feeding them just insects and we want to feed those insects with leftovers and plants recycled from our hydroponic systems: so that will be the next steps. But for now it’s just collecting data and more data.

Supaki: So Fabian, I have another question for you. Me, together with other people, I think, are wondering what is the difference between aquaponics and hydroponic?

Fabian: Well hydroponic is about producing plants and aquaponics is about producing both plants and fish. Both systems are running without any organic subsidies such as earth, they are just running in water, air and nutrition. So in hydroponics you have all the nutrition already dissolved in the water so you put in some fertiliser, usually you use some mineral fertiliser, and just let the plants grow so you have no beneficial microorganisms which convert the nutrition because there are already plants available. And in aquaponics you use the fish as a fertiliser and they produce excrements and these excrements are converted by the microorganisms to plant-available nutrition and in the end you produce both plants and fish in aquaponics and not only plants. 

Supaki: If someone or a company wants to have this system at home or in their business, what are the things they should look out for and what are the things they need to know to take care and maintain such a system?

Fabian: First of all, everybody can maintain such a system. You just have to think about the scale and the goal. So how big are you planning the system to be and what do you want it for. Do you just want a small, nice looking system to produce some herbs like this one which you can fit everywhere or do you want a bigger system that produces plenty of vegetables and produce a lot of healthy fish you can eat? So that’s the main part you have to think about, scale and goal. On the other hand, you have to think about do you plant it inside or outside and what kind of fish or vegetables you prefer. That’s just about it.

Supaki: To our impact question of the day, how will the aquaponics system impact our city and even change the world?

Fabian: I think aquaponics is a great opportunity to teach young people about food cycle and to bring back sustainable organic food production to the cities as today’s agricultural systems are located away from cities. On the other hand, I think it can play a role in small scale local food crises as it is very cheap and very easy to establish. You can feed the fish everything-you can give them just some leftovers and some insects-and the system is very efficient in water usage.

Supaki: Thank you Fabian for all the information you have given us today. Here at P3 our slogan is “Make A Statement” and it is so clear that Fabian here is ready to make a statement and impact the world in a sustainable way. Thank you for joining us today and have a good day.

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Leave us a Comment and let us know if you have any questions about Aquaponics and which area of p3 you would like to hear next. Until next time!

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