Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I've been wanting to add some grow beds to my aquariums at home for awhile. In fact, that's what led me to this website in the first place.
My intention was to get some acrylic sheet (plexiglass) and make up a bed that sits on top of the fishtank and has the lights for the fish tank integrated into it. Would have looked nice but may have been to shallow for the roots.
While in a couple of discussions about other ideas on here, a picture posted by Dave sparked a new line of thought:
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=313306&sid=de92356539191d5e12eb7e675d23815d&sid=de92356539191d5e12eb7e675d23815d#p313306
The tank within a tank finally clicked! Now, I'm not going for a full aquaponics filtered setup here. This is still a display aquarium with a canister filter underneath it. But the filter has been having a hard time keeping up with the load from the fish. Big cichlids are messy buggers. So, I got a hold of an appropriate sized plastic window planter and suspended it in the tank so that most of it is submerged and put the intake for the canister filter in the planter. Then filled it with gravel and tossed in some seeds. Let's see what happens!

Cut some extra access in the bottom toward the sides. Filter intake will be in the middle.

These guys should have cleaner water. Its a little yellow but I'm hoping the new growbed will act like a pre-filter/extra bio-filter to help out the existing aquarium canister filter.

That's cool!

I currently have a terra cotta-colored planter like that over mine, the planter had no holes in it so it is running constant flood/flow with just some grass in it for now but it's doing a super job of filtering for the fish.

The light makes it for me - very nice job and the plants will be fine anywhere you put it.

What kind of wood is it? I was using cedar to hold mine up and it made the water orange just from splashing.

The wood looks like maple, totally untreated or protected. Will probably fail eventually if not soon, although it is above the water. I'll address that when I get there. This kinda got thrown together in the background while I was in all the discussion and testing of airlifts.
I should probably say that I seeded it with Lavender, thyme, basil and green onions-kitchen stuff.

A question about the drift wood in the tank. Did you just go and find a cool looking piece in a nearby river and put in there?

Actually there are 3 different chunks of wood in there. The one with the tall plant growing out of it on the left was store bought. The tall one propped up in the corner was broken off of a larger dead limb out in the woods and put in a tank. The larger one on the bottom with all the nooks and crannies I got from a dock builder who pulled it out of a salt marsh.
Acquiring wood from nature always involves a risk. Some people boil the wood before putting it in a tank with fish. I just scrubbed them up real good and started them in the tank before the fish while it cycled.

Cool. Thanks Jimbo.