Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

We started the process of keeping dry naturally fallen Indian Almond tree leaves lie loose in the Aquaponic demo pond since last month. We are happy with the results so far. It helped to reduce and maintain the pH. Water is clear. Fish look happy and do not have any signs of bacterial or fungus diseases. We will continue adding the leaves every fortnightly. Has anyone tried this before? Results?

Nope

I don't understand

Please explain

Why would you want to do that

what's the theory behind it

what's is to be gained

The spoon I use for measuring the fish food just feel into my ft. Water looks clear and fish is feeding very well, I might leave it in the tank, seems to work wonder.

Have a look at here for more - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminalia_catappa

Fish kept in an environment that mimic its natural habitat tend to grow stronger and healthier.
Keeping the Indian Almond leaves in a FT may help lower the pH and heavy metal content of the water.
It is active against some parasites and bacterial pathogens... has anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties.

No one has yet carried out any scientific study to verify these claims. At E-bay, 10 leaves costs $6 or so.. we have truckloads of them from a huge nearby tree for our trials

We have a pistachio tree over our fish pond and connected growbed and the leaves from it have gunked up the growbed and pond (laziness on my part), and caused continuing green algae blooms
Cant imagine any leaves in excess would help an aquaponics system. The exception being lettuce for the silver perch

Good point Mantis. One leaf per 50 L of water is a good rule of thumb we can look at.

Yeah, we dropped some rose leafs in the fish tank a couple of weeks ago. The fish still doing great, feeding, jumping and having a great ball down in the tank. It's not scientifically proven (yet!) but thinking of selling them for about 500 Baht per 10 leaves. We could pack them in a nice little zip lock bag, with a beautiful sticker on it and charge even a bit more.

Anybody tried this before? Can you give some scientific results? Maybe a detailed research report with chemical components of the rose leaves that affected the fish positively, maybe some details on possible toxic reactions for a specific species? Did it work for Tilapia as well for trout, barramundi or gold fish? Are koi more affected then for example blue gill?

The organic matter can help with water quality. Many such things are good for your system in the right amounts. Look in to natural sourced plant nutrients for more info.

Thanks Damian. Do you have links to it? Maybe some pdf's with more information?

I can point you in the right direction.


AP uses micro-organisums to convert fish waste to plant food. That micro life is normally found in soil.

AP doesent use soil because the mechanical properties of soil is not good for AP, too much soil particals in the water column.

Plant roots hold the soil together and prevent soil particals from entering the water column.


There is tonnes of info free avaible on soil building, and how to design soil phicicaly and chemicaly to suite your needs. A good example of this is taking plants from soil pots to transplant to medium less systems, a root bound plant does not let go of its soil easily.

Why are you two guys trying to re-invent the wheel?

Most of the "micro-organisms" that convert fish waste to plant food... are more likely to be in water... than in "soil"...

Because they probably don't really understand the principles of the wheel... and that it's design is just about as efficient as it can be...

Or perhaps it's part of the Faceblog... "look at me.. I'm special" syndrome....

Perhaps it sometimes pays to think outside of the loop.