Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I wondered about using shredded food grade plastic as a media.. Plastic bottle caps would be interesting.

Interesting idea about using glass
A covering layer of gravel would overcome the light infiltration
But not sure how you could stop the small pieces of glass
But I do like the idea
But where would I get glass bottles in Alice Springs!

Has anyone used Eco Earth coconut fiber?

I was happy to find it at the local PetCo. On the package it says it can be used as soil with a fertilizer.
I didn't rinse it after soaking and some of my bottom leaves are looking a bit sad. Someone mentioned salt in cheeper coconut fiber so I'm a bit worried. I used regular potting soil mix for some of the tomatoes and a few have those droopy leaves too so they might just need more water.


Also, this same company makes this:

Which would be cool to purchase locally as a test at least. Shipping really adds up.
Has anyone used them?

No, but I use ZooMed's "Repti-Bark" as 1/3 of a mix for citrus trees in containers. It's uncomposted fir bark in the right size to mix with crushed granite and "Turface" infield conditioner. The bark lowers pH and does not break down as soon as deciduous bark would.

Is it worth it? I'll have to let you know. I may run some AP water thru a citrus container with a bark/Expanded Shale mix to see if anything bad happens to the water.

Yes, I have pine trees in my yard. Yes, I feel kinda dumb for buying conifer bark in bags from PetCo...
But I love buying a big batch and making offhand comments in the checkout line, about how fast cute lil' baby gators grow up!

Rick

Glass would work pretty well. If you tumbled it to make "sea glass" pebbles of it that would take care of any edges that are likely to flake off as well as cracking it on any weak points. I suppose that light might penetrate a bit, but using dark glass (beer bottles or wine bottles) rather than clear would help a lot with that. One could make an industrial tumbler out of a blue barrel or a huge tractor tire. Lots of labor....and no nutrients to release....and would be one of the heaviest media one could find.

And now for something completely different...

Has anyone used fleece as a biofilter? Like the kind you get from sheep? I bet it would be good at trapping solids. Maybe good in conjunction with something large like gravel.

Any reason not to try it?

One i can think off fleese is greasy it you have to be well washed first [like petro chem washed ]

The fleece I have in mind has been washed in hot water with mild detergent. It's been sitting around since October but I don't think anyone's going to card/spin it anytime soon.

I think you would end up with stinky anaerobic regions in the growbed, but it is somewhat tempting: free, local, long lasting, high in N when it finally breaks down...

Perhaps a setup that encourages more air (as you were picturing?)
Perhaps some sort of trickle-down setup like strawberry towers?

A good method would take some experimenting, but there is a lot of waste wool around, so please try it and report!

That sounds like using polyester batting for a biofilter, you might google those types.

EB - might be able to put you in contact with someone regarding that - let me check....

I've been collecting plastic bottle caps to test out in a tower.

Did you ever test this and/or how did it work out?

Not yet, still collecting, but we don't buy that much bottled drinks so it's a slow process. (We tend not to buy much bottled water so the few water bottle we do buy get re-used for quite a long time being re-filled since our well water is really quite good. We don't buy sodas so it is really just milk and occasionally juice when we run out of our own frozen juice and we re-use the juice bottles often too.)

I'm probably going to test out some spanish moss as media sometime. I'm currently checking to see if it affects the catfish in a small tank before I try out a large amount of it.

Have you considered shredded the containers too? Food grade after all.