Aquaponics

Hey guys this isn't going to be the usual blog post, it is however something new and exciting (probably only exciting to dorks) I have been doing it in the kitchen so I figure that it belongs in here. Either way I am excited and I want to talk about it.

Anyway It is called Aquaponics and it is all about growing plants. It is like hydroponics except that instead of using fertilizer water (which can be very toxic) you use water from an aquarium with fish in it. So basically what happens is that the fish poop ammonia and then there are some naturally occurring bacteria that will change that ammonia from to nitrites and then there is another lovely naturally occurring bacteria that will change it to a nitrate and nitrates are plant fertilizer!

Alright so lets get down to how this whole things actually works. Well for one you obviously couldn't grow the thing in soil because it would all wash down to the bottom of the aquarium. So it grows it rocks that I bought at home depot. It would probably help if I showed you a picture of the whole thing.

Alright so we have the aquarium on the bottom with the fish, we have a plastic grow bed full of rocks. This is where things get a little more complicated, you need pump the water up to the grow bed till it fills up to a certain level and then drains back out. This needs to happen a bunch of times through out the day. So you probably notice the tube sticking out of the grow bed, well that is my solution to the draining problem. I actually stole it from someone else on the internet, Thanks Wolfracer! Anyway basically when the water fills up to the top of the tube it starts a siphon which drains the whole things pretty quickly. There is a pump in the aquarium that just trickles water up into the grow bed, so it very slowly fills up. It takes about 15 minutes for the grow bed to fill up and about a minute to drain out, so it spends a lot more of the time dry than wet so this will hope keep from having issues with roots rotting which obviously can be a problem.



Alright so down below I show you a quick clip of it filling up and then the grow bed emptying out. I had to turn off the grow light because with it it was looking way to washed out it was so bright. But it give you an idea how it works. I also added a filter which I have said in the past that we wouldn't need because the plants would do the filtering, well as it turns out I don't have any plants growing yet! Also the bio filters work on the same principle as aquaponics, and it is suppose to get things going much faster. It can take a few weeks for the system to cycle up. (something I didn't realize until after I got the whole thing built)

The video is a little shaky but I took it with my digital camera, I actually think it came out kind of good. I am going to see if I can borrow my friends camera and we can do a better one. Hopefully in the next few days we will have something popping up in the bed!

I am hoping to fit a second grow bed on that shelf but when I do that I am going to come up with a new design for the siphon I hope it will be a little simpler.