aquaponics anyone?

1860 Views 9 Replies 10 Participants Last post by HX67, Feb 14, 2015

shrimpy1

Discussion Starter · Aug 22, 2008

Has anyone tried aquaponics (aquaculture + hydroponics)? ie., use aquarium water to raise edible plants? I read that leafy greens are possible with aquarium water, but there would not be enough nutrients for the likes to tomatos.

Just wondering if anyone has given this a try. I'm thinking about plumbing my koi and goldfish pond to grow some edibles.

Thanks

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orlando

· #2 · Aug 22, 2008

I don't see why it would not work.
Water with nutrients should be good for your farm

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APCRandall

· #3 · Aug 23, 2008

I grew a sweet potato slip in my betta jar. I had to throw it away it got to big.

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juss

· #4 · Aug 23, 2008

Hi,
I've tried putting Limnophila aromatica to herb up my spicy beef salad. Taste weird, but I didn't get sick.

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NoSvOrAx

· #5 · Aug 23, 2008

I'd be careful. A lot of the products used in aquariums are not good for you and not intended for food.

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seove

· #6 · Sep 22, 2014

I'm growing a sweet potato in my overflow box and it is looking good. I've started to take the larger slips off and I'm putting them in the sump refugium. I'm wondering if they can survive submerged. The snails and crayfish like the dying leaves.

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TankAaron

· #7 · Sep 22, 2014

This is interesting. In my eyes, growing something edible would increase our hobby's usefulness, and decrease wasted resources.

NoSvOrAx said:
I'd be careful. A lot of the products used in aquariums are not good for you and not intended for food.

Would there be a negative effect to using products that are safe for human consumption in our tanks, instead of the additives we use now?

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pandragon

· #8 · Sep 22, 2014

I have seen a few videos on youtube about hydroponic farmers pumping aquarium/pond water through there system. Some even stick big fish like bass or trout in a circulating hyper oxygenated tank to provide nitrogen for the plants and have earth worms in the plant beds which are composed of only fine gravel to keep the roots trimmed and decompose plants like cilantro after cutting to make ready for new seeds. It looks really cool and I was thinking of trying something small scale, like a window garden, like that one day if I ever et around to it.

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marguell

· #9 · Oct 2, 2014

I've grown herbs before in a DIY aquaponics setup. I just had a pump pushing water through a box where I grew herbs, and it drained back into the tank. They grew just fine, they looked pretty healthy too. You can find alot of DIY plans and videos online if you're interested in doing something like this.

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HX67

· #10 · Feb 14, 2015

Here's an easy aquaponics growbox design that's been filtering a tank and grown food/other plants for me.
It's been working for two years with this simple ebb&flow pipe without missing a beat. Which is far better than I can say about any bell siphon I ever tried to come up with…

The parts:

Filter cloth to the ends of the drainage tube:

Safety overflow (in case the other gets jammed) and an inlet for the ebb&flow pipe:

Sliding the drainage tube on the inlet:

Drainage installed:

Pre-glued pipe, gaskets, vaseline:

Pipe installed into the inlet:

Basic level of the water at the start of the siphon:

…can be adjusted up (longer cycle)

…or down (faster cycle)

…or stopped altogether (in case you need to keep the water high and let the overflow take care of the flow)

There. Easy and cheap.
Now just fill the box with the growbed material of your choice and install a pump to get some water flowing.

Thanks of looking.

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