Word: tilapia
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...McLarney have created a prototype agricultural "ark," a self-sufficient food-producing complex involving greenhouses, fish ponds, solar heaters and a windmill. The odd layout is clustered around three greenhouse-covered ponds built on an incline. The lowest pond contains a variety of edible fish, mostly the tasty tropical tilapia (somewhat like the sunfish). Pumped by the windmill, the water from this pond is passed through a solar heater, then circulated through a bed of crushed, bacteria-laden shells in the topmost pond. The bacteria not only detoxify the fish wastes but convert the ammonia in them to nitrites...
Full Diet. Then the algae-enriched water is fed into the middle pond, where the microscopic plants provide feed for tiny crustaceans called daphnids, or water fleas. Finally, water containing fleas and algae flows back into the bottom tank, where it provides a full diet for the tilapia. Nothing is wasted: in the warm greenhouse space above the ponds, the new alchemists grow vegetables even in the dead of the New England winter. The plants are fertilized by the nutrient-laden fish water. To protect their harvests against bugs, the scientists have brought insect-eating frogs, spiders and chameleons instead...