Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I have a system designed in my head. I am very new never done any aquaponics. Why Can't Plants Float in Fish Water? How can I fix this if possible? Thanks

They can,the method is called DWC,Deep water Culture,with this system you have a tank with which you have rafts floating on the surface of the water, the rafts have holes in them to place net pots so as the roots can grow into the water.Your fish water is pumped or gravity fed into the tank then returns through an outlet back into your sump or fish tank,air is generally added into the bed to oxygenate the water and keep it turn over to prevent dead spots,it is a very popular and successful method,a good thread to look at is Ryans Florida backyard porch system and then to see what is achievable Chattersons farm,As you get more ideal of what you want to achieve just ask more question,the members here are only to willing to help.
Oh and welcome to the forum.....

Thank you. I have been doing some research and have found/seen this system but every system I see has a separate fish tank I want to float the plants in the fish tank. I forgot to mention I know that species like tilapia will eat the roots of the plants but I plan to use trout. Thanks for the welcome

I'm curious which type of plants can grow directly in the fish tank. I was hoping lilies for ours

People often float plants on their fish tank, though it is not wise to cover the fish tank completely, as you want room on the surface for oxygen exchange. Generally it is people with rather large tanks. Helomechs system comes to mind. The caveat is that the floating plants add little to nothing for filtraton, and it is in the filters, weather it is a gravel grow bed or a bio filter, that the real magic happens. (By magic, I mean the nitrification process, which is the key to this whole thing)

Water hyacinths, water lillies and other aquatic plants compete for nutrients with your vegetables and seem to take in quite a bit of these but you can add them to your pond if you want. I have a couple of water lillies in my tank and used to have hyacinths during the Summers (they got a bit too greedy). Depending on how cold your system gets you might do alright with the tropical water lillies.

A lot depends on your fish though - lillies might not do to well if the water has to be kept moving pretty fast and having the plants in there definitely affects any self cleaning action you're hoping for.

So the only problems are oxygen and filtration? I shared a link on an aerator I plan on making that should give plenty of oxygen and I planned on having lots of filtration (Bio filters) because I the more Bio filtration the more fish and the better the plants right? If those are my only problems I think I can make this work, I will try and describe the system later but it saves lots of floor space

There's also the third problem of mulm accumulating on the plant roots.

None of these issues mentioned so far are deal breakers.

The New Alchemy Institute and Ronald Zweig had a similar design in the mid 1980's that utilized floating rafts in the fish tank, with mesh cages to protect the plant roots. A PDF is here... "An Integrated Fish Culture Hydroponic Vegetable Production System" 1986 It worked for them.

thanks, that is another relief.
http://www.pondplantgirl.com/lily-lotus.html

oh boy!

What is milm and how can it be eliminated. I can't believe I am the first to really try it this way. I am thinking normal crops floating on a raft board in the FT with like tomatoes and stuff

Thanks for that link it had a lot of good info

You won't be the first to try it.. As with most things, people have given them a go before but found for many reasons that it's probably not the optimum way of doing things. Faye used to grow a massive crop of water cress floating on the fish tank, but then a fish became unhealthy and got itself tangled up in the roots, it died and started to decompose, but had got itself so tangled up in the roots you couldn't see it, this caused a lot of other fish to die.

It's a case of weighing up pros and cons, you really want to be able to see your fish to look for signs of stress, to look for sick or injured fish. You want to be able to see their behaviour on a daily basis, you also want to know if there's a build up of feed or waste anywhere on the bottom of your fish tank and if it's covered in rafts and plants you won't know.