title: 16s rRNA gene sequencing: Media-bed zones of Aquaponics
design: Triplicate samples (200 g each) from the  top  dry zone (25 cm depth); root zone (1020 cm depth ), and  the bottom mineralised zone (35 cm depth) were collected from flood-and-drain media-bed aquaponic system.In addition, 2 L of water was collected in sterile pyrex bottles from the growth bed through the outlet pipe.DNA was extracted from microbial cells associated with filter materials.The sequence fastq files from the Illumina MiSeq were analysed using Mothur platform version 1.41.3 release (Schloss et al., 2009).