Hello all this is my first post here on the forums and I was looking for some friendly feedback and tips. I live in a 100+ year old farm house. I have a decent amount of land and a 5 min walk out back brings me to the edge of the woods and a large pond. Not sure how long it has been there but a 92 year old neighbor remembers it being there when he was little. The pond has fish (at least two kinds), frogs, tadpoles, turtles, and lots of aquatic insects. Next to the pond along the tree line gets full all day sun. So for years I have been thinking it would be a cool for fun hobby project to set up a test aquaponic setup.
You can get a better view of my full setup here:
My solar panel pump low lighting test here:
What I did was install a 12V pond pump which I'm powering with some solar panels (through a buck voltage regulator to stabilize power). Water flows from the pond and into the pvc. When the PVC gets half full a pipe I have installed at the side drains the water to another area of the pond. It's been working for three days and draining properly for three days. I then found this forum and thought it would be wise to ask some questions before I possibly run into any problems.
Following the suggestion of a friend I made some holes in the bottom of the pots for the roots to come out into the pipe. She told me to use only small holes as the roots would find their way out. Though I've been worried perhaps the holes should be bigger?
I was testing mediums I had on hand to hold the tomato plants. 1/2 are in mulch and the other are in peat moss. Any issue with these? I grew mint out of my in house fish tank in peat moss and it grew like gangbusters. But I know these are tomatoes.
This is basically a for fun project to learn as I go. If it works I plan to maybe ad 10 more PVC tubes next year. Any tips/info? I did this before I found the aquaponics internet community so hopefully I did not do too bad. Thanks again for all constructive friendly help.
Few more pics:
Pond pump.
Setup with solar.
At a distance.
Initially I thought it may of been a power problem and after checking and measuring all connections I checked the pump and found a massive clump of algae blocking the pump strainer (something someone here mentioned may be an issue with a pond). The pump ran for 10 days without clogging but that doesn't mean it could happen again while I'm away for 4-5 days. So I had to brainstorm a possible fix to add in a few hours to try and help protect my pump from algae. What I decided to try is using 2 sponge filters (I have a bag of several sponges I keep for my fish tank) and modify them to cover the pump strainer cap so all water has to come through the giant sponge and hopefully catch a lot more of this algae. With 2 of these modified sponges (to go over the pump cap) I can rotate a sponge each week. The used algae filled sponge can go into a bucket of bleach water to soak/dissolve the algae and then I'll finish manually cleaning it in the sink for use the following week. 
