Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Compost / earth worms living in growbeds?? I do a bit of worm farming and thought that worms drowned in excessively wet conditions?

I take it that we are talking in the context of flood and drain systems, which are only periodically inundated, as opposed to continuous flow?

Am I missing something here?

Nope.... worms do just fine... as well as the water is well oxygenated.... flood & drain ... no problems at all....

Continuous.... possible, if the water is constantly, and highly oxygenated...

The other reason they do so well in flood & drain... is the constant supply of food available... from solids (from the fish tank).... and old roots etc...

Yes, I was looking at using a bead filter to remove most solids because I need to be indoors to winter my tilapia. Its a duel filter setup; the bead filter opperating in parallel to the growbeds. At this point I am going to just use standard flood and drain growbeds and dump my bead filter to it and then gradually reduce the amount I dump to the grow bed until I notice deficiencies.

I may even consider using some humanure that has been composted and cooked as a source for trace elements. My goal is to have a system that does not require adding chemicals/nutrients from the outside(purchased). Currently my water has enough iron and and potassium is added from hard wood ash (also balances pH).