Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

+1
I just killed 25 trout by stirring up gunk. After killing 25 in a separate tank
keep solids to a minimum. It is a serious concern.
Make sure you clean any gravel in the ft regularly.

Yes, I have also seen major water quality declines in a heavily stocked system after stirring up gunk.
Gunk build up is a bomb waiting to go off. When ever you do something to stir it up, be ready to aerate/cycle things to the max to try and clear the problem as quickly as possible. If you stir something up and notice a stink, that stink is a sign of gasses that can be very bad for fish and you really want to avoid them in the first place.

I think this is the key - "heavily stocked"
Last year I regularily stired up the bottom of my tank to send a bit of gunk up to the grow beds. Trout didn't like the excitement of me poking around, it clouded up the water for a little while, but there were no deaths and no smell.
Aquaponics tries to replicate natural water ecosystems, but most of us do it in a way that increases fish densities far in excess of a natural ecosystem. There would be plenty of gravel/anorobic pockets/gunk in the bottom of a natural (healthy) pond, but if you jumped in and stirred it up would all of the fish die?

I'm more into functionality, so if it doesn't affect the health of the fish then I'm not going to bother.

So im just starting and have an ornamental tank that is planted with 2 in or so of gravel,

I have Physa snails (I think) that are starting to multiply, and the first one i saw seems to aerate my substrate,
Would some of these guys (along with one of my goldfish that likes to pick through the rocks), keep the substrate healthy and dislodge the offending anorobic pockets?

As you noted, it is an ornamental tank, if you keep it stocked appropriately for an ornamental tank and are simply adding a grow bed to use up the nitrates instead of having to do water changes. Even so, stuff can build up in the gravel and cause issues. Perhaps adding some composting worms into the system would help some but you might still have to clean the gravel every so often.

I would not expect a few snails and a gold fish to really dislodge anaerobic pockets unless they actually agitate the gravel so vigorously that you see clouds of stuff stirred up regularly by their action.

It seems that the top 3/4 to 1/2 inch of the substrate is regularly redistributed throughout the tank with some build up around the corners and the larger rocks,

But will clean

So when it comes to worms,,,
I saw your post concerning their ability to live underwater, and I think I have the aeration to do it,

any species advice or any available composters will do, you think?

thanks

composting worms are fine, one type I know is in somebody's system is tiger worms I think they're called, but I have earth worms in my system, big thick ones, so any worm'll do.

Thanks for the info

Will add worms
good protein if nothing else

I would like to say, dont put gravel in your fish tanks unless your willing to clean it ""reguarly", I did to start with, I decided to put some pots in and just put the gravel in the pots and plant them out with water plants, make it aesthetic and more natural looking, but when I removed one for some general cleaning the smell was rancid, that bad I wanted to be sick. It could not have been good for my fish and probably even explains why my barras wouldnt eat for so long. Seriously dont put gravel in

Couldn't agree more.... can't see a single beneficial reason to do so....

If it is an Aquaponics system for growing food, I agree, don't put gravel in the fish tank.

However, I can't really see people who are trying to create a beautiful display aquarium leaving the tank bottom bare. I guess if you are gonna do a display tank, you are gonna put the extra time/effort/money etc into cleaning the gravel and all else.

Yep, sure... an aquarium is a different thing completely... and will need cleaning... which is why I wouldn't do it in an AP system...

Even if you were going to clean it regularly in an AP system.... stirring up your tank continually would result in all sorts of spikes in water quality... and upset your fish...

So i'm curious if people feel that reproducing a "complete" ecosystem is a waste of time,
(I realize this is something of a joke in my tiny system but...)

seems like if stocking densities were controlled, could the gravel house reproducing bugs and such to supplement fish diets as well as diversify the biological processing of the system?

or is that just a newbie's pipe dream?

PFFFT!
I have a nice indoor aquarium (connected to AP), it's hard to keep the glass clean, but cleaning the gravel is a once in 6 month slurp using a gravel cleaner, draining to the FT drain, it's hardly an effort.
If you don't stock and feed too much (which for a display aquarium, you don't) then it really doesn't matter. I should probably clean my gravel more than Biannually though.