Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

This is my 50 gallon aquarium, and you can only see the goldfish, and the algae infestaion in this picture, but there are bigger, carniverous fish as well. I'm hoping that the more plants I have growing in the trough, the less of a problem I will have with algae. The aquarium's canister filter passes through the trough before draining back into the tank.



The flow stays at about 1 and 1/2 mm, at the bottom of the trough, and right now I'm only using rock wool to grow plants in, even though I could probably fill uo the whole trough with perlite, or some kind of medium, (maybe even aquarium gravel!) One of my favorite herbs is mint though, and I see problems in the future with it, and yanking roots out of the trough.



the canister filter, below the tank has all kinds of filter medium in it; such as, peat moss, (which controls ph,) charcoal, (which controls spikes in things like amonia, or anything toxic,) and finally ceramic filter meduim, (which provides a good home for beneficial aquarium slime.) Plants seem to go nuts for what comes out of it.



This is my other, planted aquarium, with seed starter on top; and as you can see, there is much less of an algae problem in this tank. Just cutting a hole in the bottom of the seed starter, and putting it over the tank provides plenty of humidity, heat, and nutirients for the growing seeds. Plus, the great thing about these little rock wool cubes is that if something doesn't grow in them, you can just pop more seeds in on top.

A handy tip for aquariums is not to have in front of a window where it can get direct sunlight. This creates ideal growing conditions for the algae.

I really feel sorry for those fish in there. Once algae takes over like that, it usually isn't too good.

if you want to place it there for the plants you could always line the back ands sides of it with Al foil.

...or black cardboard from the newsagent if you dont want to attract aliens with the tinfoil

Why risk it, protect your fish from mindcontrol from the govament

I wasnt going to mention that in case they shut the forum down....with George Doubleya comin n all...lol what a waste of space he is..oops wrong thread

s ok, ferny will dial up her mates in the sky and they will fix it all up

so THATS what the frequency jammin helicopter is for....AFY

Surprised none of you guys have commented on Rampants avatar yet....

I noticed it

you're thinking of Vb, rope he's the sexual deviate

your norty rope

theres a fork in every crevice!

you sayin its well n truly forked C1?

Thanks for the comments everyone, I think that this system is going to be alot of fun once I get it all up and going. I'm sure that there will be some kinks to work out, but I'm going to enjoy every minute of it. Keeping aquariums is a cool hobby, but this is so much better. I think I'll make a run to the pet store and get some of that aquarium backing stuff, not sure if that will help with the mind control though.

new pictures

decided to fill the trough with sylica rock; this stuff is awesome, and if you want to spend the money on medium, I really recomend it; especially for AP, becuase it acts like a super heavy duty biofilter for the tank too. It does a great job of oxygenating the water too when it exits the tank. The trough drains a little better on the right side, water mint on the left, (wet side,) and Lavendar on the right, (dry side.)