Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Is it a common practice to just cut the plan and let the roots be decayed and digested by the system or do people tend to pull the entire plant out of the growbed?

I tend to pull the entire plant out. I usually wait for the bed to flood. then wringle the plant. that seems to make it a bit easier to get all of roots out because I use gravel as media.

I will pull the plant out but never worry about the rots that remain as each GB gets 'seeded' with 2 or 3 works frm the worm farm and they take care of the roots as they decay.

Do the worms stay in the grow beds or do they make their way into other places? (I'm not entirely sure how their reproduction process works, after all I'm designing a micro set-up)

they tend to stay in the beds - looking at beds we have pulled appart they must be breeding too as there are more, most of them smaller

I mostly leave the roots in, they dissapear after a few months.

Do you tend to find that you have issues with PH and ammonia levels as they decay? I've used root solutions that break down dead roots in hydroponic set-ups, but I don't want to add anything that will hurt the fish.

Composting worms seem to do grand in flood and drain grow beds. They may even do ok in always flooded beds so long as there is lots and lots of air. Worms reproduce by mating with other worms (though they are hermaphrodites they still need to exchange sperm) They will later lay cocoons that can remain in the grow beds till they hatch baby worms.

As to the roots, if you are doing a very small system with shallow grow beds, you will probably want to pull most of the roots out since they may make it more prone to clogging until the roots break down. If you are short of beds for your stocking density, it may be even more important. In bigger beds, it isn't that big of a deal depending on how heavily the beds are planted and your stocking density.

No ph or ammonia issues here, but as tcl says, shallow beds probably need roots removed. Mine are 500mm deep.

With the worm capsules, I have noticed them in and among the roots of plants when I have removed them...I now inspect all root matter and place it back into the GB if any capsules are spotted...kinda give the younguns something to live on

TCLynx: I think what I may do is cut the plant and wait 1 week to let the roots break down. I'm considering creating a worm farm in each individual 2 gallon jugs that I'm using for my Micro-system.

Do you think that will give time for the bacteria and worms to break down the roots?

Maybe I'll take a page out of ellkaybee's book and inspect and deside whether or not they stay or go.

well, it usually takes a biiit longer than that for the roots to break down enough for thye worms to consume them....

heh 1 week lol

Try around two months for root breakdown, unless they are allowed to totally dry out, ie turning the bed off for a fortnight.

Well clearly 1 week isn't enough. As I said in our hydro set-ups we used some chemicals to breakdown roots, which I won't beable to do here, but what do you guys think would be a good waiting period to wait before planting so that I don't run into root clogging. OR should I just clean the roots out? Maybe chop them up and feed them to the fish?

I pulled most of the roots, but not worrying about the stragglers. I then waited about two weeks before replanting. I figured by the time the seedlings got to the point of using that space, the roots would be gone or mostly so. In the future, I will likely replant right away to keep plant material present.