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My Fish Garden - Aquaponics

• Jan 27, 2019
• PalaciosAn
•   1475        2      0

I was always interested in aquaponics, to me, it was just another reason to have more fish. While my main focus had been on reef aquariums, I always knew once I had space I would have to give aquaponics a try. My neighbor got into aquaponics and set up a nice compressed aquaponics system to save space. At the time the planted tanks were not very popular. The idea to have a freshwater tank attached to a garden that cleaned the water for a freshwater tank, it just made sense. Aquaponics always seems cool but I never really realized how quickly you could grow vegetables and herbs.

My neighbor was going out of town for about five days, and he wanted me to keep an eye on his system, and he wanted me to feed the fish three times a day and make sure that the room got too hot and everything seemed ok. I told him I would watch over it but that I was planning on putting in an automatic feeder on the system that I had sitting around. He did not mind, and as we left he pointed at this super small pepper which was just past the flowering point and was only maybe 3 millimeters big, and he said. “If you want you can have this pepper,” I was like “great thanks” sarcastically. I assumed he was just joking around.

I came by each day to check on the system and make sure that everything was OK. That darn pepper almost doubled in size each day, by Sunday that pepper was about 6” long. I was amazed at how quickly it grew, I had a normal garden and even when I was diligent and kept the garden well watered I never got peppers that large. At that moment I knew I had to set up an aquaponics setup once I had space.

A few years past we moved to the San Antonio TX area, and I get a call from my past neighbor, and he tells me that he is moving and will not have space for it anymore and wanted to see if I was interested in his aquaponics system. We were building a home and I knew I would have space for it once our home was done, so I jumped on it. So I drove back down to the Houston area loaded everything up and brought it back and set it in a storage unit until we were done building our house.

Finally, the time came, and I tried to set it up exactly how he had it set up to prevent any additional expenses. The original system was using grow lights, the lights were not included and I really wanted to use a greenhouse instead so I built a simple PVC greenhouse and set the aquaponics unit inside it. I had to replace the pump that he was using it no longer worked, I replaced it with a Jebao DCP Sine Wave Water Return Pump. I also bought a Cobalt 150 Watt Neo-Therm Heater, Smart WiFi Power Strip (to power on and off items as needed easily) and an Exterior Battery Box to house anything that should not get wet (just in case).

I set everything up and tested everything, went out and picked up 40 cheap goldfish and some bacteria to quick start the system. Lost one fish on the way home but the 39 goldfish survived, a lot of people choose a fish that you can eat which is an excellent choice if you can control the temperature easier. In Texas, the weather can change over 20 degrees overnight, I need a hardy fish, and I preferred an air breather in the event of a power outage I did not have to worry about aerating the water. Plus you want a dirty fish too, to me the Goldfish seems like the logical choice but we will see if that was a good choice in the time to come.

So the aquaponics system consists of the following: I have a 100 gallon Rubbermaid Stock Tank, Two 55 Gallon Drums (you can pick them up for cheap on Craigslist) one is split in two, and the other one is partially cut out. The two halves are set up as a raise and drain bed each has a bell siphon and are full of clay media. The other drum with the cut out is used as a floating bed.

Last week I after using some green onions I went ahead and set them in the raise and drain beds and this week the green onion is about 4” long. The system has now been up for two weeks now, there are still some low traces of Ammonia in the system, and Nitrate levels continue to rise. We were germinating some lettuces to put into the float beds, a total of 12. I think they will start to help remove the nitrates from the system.

Next week I will test the water again and see how everything starts to grow.

This setup is aquaponics version 1.0, if everything works out well then I will set everything up, the way that I want it set up. I have a bit more space to play with and an elevated garden the way that he had it was cool but I could setup the gardens a little lower which I imagine will make the garden easier to work with.

I know this site focuses on aquariums, not aquaponics so I am not sure how much interest there will be so if you want to hear more about this, like and comment below. No likes, no comments I will assume no one wants to hear anything else about it.