Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello,

I am creating an aquaponics station out of an aquarium and would like to know the best plants to grow whose roots can be 100% submerged. I will be floating the plants on either styrofoam or wooden plank.

What are some obstacles I'll be facing in this system?

I was thinking of having goldfish for now.

The first thing that comes to mind is that some fish might enjoy nibbling on the roots.

But most plants can live well with 100% submersion, depending on things like nutrients, water flow, and most of all dissolved oxygen in the water. In my DWC beds, the things that are outperforming are celery/lettuce/strawberries/leeks/kale. I'm still getting very slow growth with tomatoes in the DWC, but it's the wrong time of year for it anyway.

Anything given the right parameters.

(in the UK, IBC system using clay pebbles)

The best crop I had which absolutely loved the submerged roots AP was water cress. I had a floating tray which soon became packed full of cress so I also put it in the main grow bed and it soon spread.

I tried a range of plants (this being my first year of ap), the auto syphon is a bit dodgy so often the roots are 100% submerged.

Most plants did pretty well. Tomatoes in a submerged system are not a good plant. The leaves go purple (due to too much water) and the plants are stunted. The ones in the green house went nuts in comparison. The same was true for peppers, i guess the warmth in the green house also helped enormously.

Lettuce did ok but they all got lettuce aphids on the roots which stunted many of them. i was wondering if things like Rocket or spinach get aphids? does anyone know?

Parsley did well.

Courgettes did very well in AP but got rather big. The courgettes in the green house also did well but it is rather humid in there and many of them went mouldy. shame.

Next year;

Yes; water cress, lettuce (although less), parsley. will try spinach and rocket also, fingers crossed the aphids won't go for the roots (will try leeks too...and kale)

No; (if you have an outdoor system) don't bother with tomatoes, peppers, chillies, kos lettuce, and courgette plants get too big for a small AP system.