Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

The plants look really good! It would be cool to put a half-silvered mirrored glass in front so that most light bounces back onto the plants but you could see through to them.

Yes, that would make a very nice window. I think some have used space blankets for light and moisture containment, but I like your idea that they would also act as a window........cheap, too!

Reports:

All the plants grown in pots are in the garden AP or given away. The tomatoes are about 5' (160cm) tall and starting to produce well.

The peppers grew too dang large for the system, so I uprooted one and planted it in our greenhouse system. The other two I just pulled out. The remaining plants have been trained out the window and make do with sunlight.

The catfish seemed to be sluggish. I put this down to crowding and put the four largest in the garden system with the trout in the separate waiting-to-be-eaten tank. This is where I put trout so I can simply dip them out rather than needing to go in with mask, snorkel, and flashlight. Some food from the main tank gets sucked in and the cats can eat it. I put 12 more cats into the system 2.5 where they are doing fine. Still, the water builds up nitrites and ammonia to levels that irritate the cats, necessitating a water change every few days.
Today I tried to clean out the sump, thinking that food or bacteria or ?? might have made its way through the hydroton and be rotting there. I reached in to feel around and it felt like half water, half jellyfish! Nasty...so I siphoned that out pretty darned well and hope it helps.

So, why did the stuff build up and how can one prevent it? I was feeding too much and depending on a strainer to catch the food before it entered the growbed, but the excess food was probably masticated by the water flow into a fine goo that passed through or I forgot to empty the strainer and it overflowed. I have occasionally had problems like this with other systems, but the clogging growbed always told me to reduce feeding. I wish I knew a way to overfeed and catch any extra.... So far, the only way I know of to do this is to have some hungry catfish or goldfish in a cleanup tank between the fish tank and the growbed.

Another issue might be that this system is fairly new and the fish weight is up near the limit for the growbed. I guess the largest ones should go off to the garden system to keep the trout company on death row....

If your growbeds are clogging up... you're either...

Overfeeding...

Overstocked... or both...

Under-filtered...

Media too small...

All of the above

Yep. Pieces of food in growbed are a sure sign. That's why I cut back.

But with this indoor system I find that a lot of food is getting sucked out of the tank within half a minute, so the fish don't have a chance of eating it all. Perhaps I need to adjust my in-flow plumbing to keep food away from the SLO longer...

great looking little system you got going there hydro

How come you have the aquarium in front of the window though? won't the sunlight falling on it all day induce algae growth?

North-facing window. It gets about 1 hr per day in summer, none the rest of the year.

I only put it there because I've nowhere else to put it. Little house! Three people!

got to have room in your heart not in the house buddy

My small indoor system is in front of a window. The glass tank got covered on 3 sides with aluminum at the first sign of algae. The plants like the light coming through the window but I've since added two florescent clip-on lights nearby for extra light. It has helped although just being an indoor system, the plants have had trouble hardening enough to want to produce so now I try to vary the ceiling fan which has helped only a little.

A quick heads up about indoor aquaponics, water spreads.

And thats all I have to say about that.

My wife wanted to put nice floors in the house. I insisted on polyurethane (like linoleum) for exactly that reason and have flooded the floor at least three times in the year since we installed it. It is so easy to forget that I am topping-up with an hose.....

Never underestimate the value of a tap-timer Hydrophilia. Better to be safe than sorry, I think I learnt the third time.

Yep, Faye, but they are not very accurate for less than a few minutes and I always tell myself that I won't get distracted that fast....

Now I simply stand there while it fills...

Once my tomato grew large enough, I trained it out the window and let it grow over the scale and cat-food bucket. Then, on November 25th, the frost got it.

Rapunzel Rapunzel let down your hair!