Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi folks, I've been really enjoying the forums so far, and certainly learned a lot from reading your posts. With the constant droughts we're suffering here in Georgia, I'm hoping to give some of my gardening a relief from the heat and dry weather by doing my growing indoors. Since I've already got a fully-stocked and well-cycled 55 gallon tropical aquarium, I thought it would be natural to use this as a starting point for my first foray into aquaponics.

The twist, in my case, is that it has to look decent. This is going to be something installed in my kitchen - it will be a conversation piece as well as part of my decoration.

Because of this, my thought is to skip flood and drain concepts altogether. The fluctuation in the tank water levels, along with the more complicated plumbing, lead me to believe it would end up turning into an ugly monstrosity very quick. Instead, I'd like to use the nutrient film technique, using a few long and narrow plastic window box planters (reasonably attractive) as my growbed.

Does this idea sound reasonable, or just stupid? I'm not necessarily looking for the most efficient or most effective method, but a way to put my already-existing fish waste to good use to grow a few veggies in the kitchen while still looking pretty good.

I'm still stuck on a few details of the NFT technique - can someone point me to a good beginner's DIY guide for the method?

You will still need a good gravel bio filter, or other filter to remove all waste. Otherwise the roots in the nft will get coated and not do so well.

Welcome Emory!

I made a little system with two aquariums, the fish tank part is completely empty except for a couple pipes. The pump is in the other gravel aquarium. The only trick with this is the "water bridge" that connects the two tanks without cutting holes in the aquarium. These devices are used in reef aquariums a lot, using acrylic usually. The trick is that if a bubble forms over the whole top of the weir then the overflow stops and water goes on the floor.

Otherwise having a bed above the tank that flows back down to the aquarium would work well if you have enough vertical room. Vegetables can get tall even in these kinds of setups.

viewtopic.php?p=125119#p125119 (have to scroll down a bit to see the demo system design graphic)

I am actually running three filters on the tank at the moment (pretty large bio load - heavily stocked cichlid tank). The idea was to pipe the output from them into the NFT system.

There was an e-book linked on the forum somewhere, I think it was www.howtohydroponics.com by Keith Roberto, its a pretty good starting point.

If you put the nft after one of the filters it will work well - the nft water must be filtered.

I use a bead filter on my fry tank. They are amazing filters for bio filtering and removing solids, super easy to clean as they wash clean with air bubbles.

See my home made version of a bubble washed bead filter here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2903&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=63

Since the aquarium already has a functioning filter system, the goal here is to use up the nitrate rich water rather than having to do the regular water changes to normal unplanted aquarium do.
NFT will work with pre-filtered water (people starting brand new system from scratch often need to be reminded that bio/solids filtration needs to be done and gravel beds on flood/drain are a pretty efficient way of doing this while giving you a place to grow the plants.

If you had a handy place under the aquarium to put a sump tank of some sort, then flood and drain would not have to be so difficult or cause any fluctuation in the fish tank but it does take the extra tank and space.

For NFT you can do pipes or troughs but the main thing you will need to work out is how to support your plants over the nutrient film. Common method is to support the plants in net pots or cups with holes using a small amount of some sort of media.
Here is a page from my web site that has some pictures of the home made cups for my old hydroponics stuff and it shows pictures of how I used mop string to act as a wick to help start seeds directly in the cups rather than having to transplant or top water.

Another option would be to put some type of media in the trough to help support the plants while still only running the water through the bottom. Call this modified NFT. This can be quite attractive using a window box type planter with pretty gravel or whatever you like. Only warning with this method, if the plant roots get real big, they can block the flow and it could overflow out the top and make a mess (this is possible with any NFT set up though it is easier to pull a plant out and trim the roots in normal NFT. In a gravel filled container, you may need to clean up spilled gravel whenever you pull plants out or put new plants in.)

oops, I meant to attach a link to my old hydroponics page
http://www.hydroponics.tclynx.com/