Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Where is the delete button?

To VLT:
No offense taken or meant where you are concerned - but hay, you can just stick the plants in dirt too - right?

Different systems have their own concept, and often have several similarities and differences at the same time.

If I had a ready supply of free Bat Guano, I might just do container gardening - it depends on all kinds of things; what may work, work better, or suit certain resources or methods.

I do stick stuff into the ground to see if it grows Currently have a 3 year old logan tree in Melbourne. Might need to bubble wrap it to make it produce fruit.

What I was trying to say was....the premise that plants want only worm waste isnt totally correct. I used my system as an example.

But hey...I'm still learning....so will leave this thread to those who have mastered AP. I'm going home tonight to incorporate the chicken bedding into the dirt garden....

I'm confused ( this happens frequently ) , plants only want worm waste ?

I dont have any worms , only fish and bacteria and the plants seem ok .




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But then it woudnt be AQUAPONICS would it ? I understood the principal of aquaponics was to produce fish and plants for food .

Sorry Prawnz, I didnt write any of that.

R9X... the plants in an aquaponics system are primarily fed by nutrients in solution...

The ammonia excreted by the fish makes it's way into the grow bed... where the bacterial colony inhabiting the media converts it into nitrates for the plants... still in solution...

Any solids, fish wastes... are still essentially in solution... albeit perhaps suspended rather than solute... and the worms breakdown such "solids" to release the trace elements into solution... thus mineralising the system...

The plants thrive because all the plants needs are available all the time... in soluble form...

And I guess that's why most people are saying that you just don't need anything else...

With regard to feeding "natural" feed stocks... no harm at all... but it's extremely difficult to simulate a natural food chain... and most feeds are only of supplementary value rather than a complete and balanced feed...

Love it or hate it... commercial pellets have been formulated to be as close to a complete balanced feed as possible... especially in terms of the amino acid profile which is the limiting factor in protein conversion and grow...

Well, not that plants "only" want worm waste...
Worms are great for plants, for various reasons, but most universally, "Worm castings" are fantastic fertilizer.
Fish waste, itself, is not that great for plants, but the bacteria(s) that convert nitraites and nitrates are essential parts of the cycle.
Worms do not eat fish waste, they feed mostly on bacteria.
Fish waste = bacteria = nitrates/fertilizer;
Fish waste = bacteria = worms = worm castings.

Plants can use many things as fertilizer/food, but some things are better than others by a large margin.
You could plant in fairly poor dirt, and things will grow; but if you plant them in great soil with bat guano, they will do much better.

Unfortunately, for AP or soil planting, bat guano is almost impossible to incorporate into the cycle, unless you do AP in a bat cave - and then the light(s) would be a problem.

For my methods that I am developing, one food source for plants that is also in the top 5 is Shrimp waste. - Shrimp waste???
Ghost, or fresh water shrimp clean up aquariums very nicely, are very cheap (.33 Cents ea. at Pet Smart locally to me) and produce great waste for the system.

Fish waste + Shrimp waste + worm waste + Aquariumwater = happy plants.

This does not include all the other parts to a small ecosystem, like tubifex, daphnia, infusoria, possibly rotifers; then certain aquarium plants, duckweed, etc etc etc.

If you put all the right things into the system, everything feeds on everything else; the waste of one thing is the food or fuel of another, etc.

then there are all the other possible components, like water=humidity=condensation on specially designed greenhouse glazing=naturally distilled water back into the system.

The system can be very simple, or the sytem can also be very diverse and yet still be made simple.

Okay... I guess I am going to have to change/add to my signature...
I am well aware of the basics, thank you.
Lets not waste time and effort on debating the basics.
I am going beyond the basics, I do not want to waste my time debating the basics, I am looking for ideas and helpful information.
If I was only about the basics, I would not have come to this forum.

Perhaps it might help if we invert the question RX9...

What is it that you think is missing, in terms of plant nutrient requirements, from a pellet fed AP system???...

What, in your opinion are the plants lacking??

Nothing is actually "missing". this is about making it overall better and more self-sufficient.
One problem - those pellets. They do not actually grow on trees, you have to buy them, which means putting more effort and money into the system, which is a total waste. Provide the fish with food that reproduces itself and you don't need to buy pellets anymore - one less thing to spend money on, and the fish will actually be better fed anyway and happier.
One day, long ago, when doing my first ecosystem in a brewers bottle, I put in some aquatic moss and stuff I got from a semi-local stream (From way out away from civilization where things were still fairly untouched)
The fish went wild, darting about and feeding on the little life forms that came along with my nature sample, were much more active afterward, and the whole system functioned better for quite some time untill all the little creatures were gobbled up.

The way I see it, you have to take into account the fact that you will be removing essential minerals from the system. It's great to have a system that is almost entirely closed loop, but if you are going to remove fish and plants, and consume them, then the micro nutrients and minerals must be replaced from outside sources... This is unless your planning on adding your own personal wastes back into the loop again yourself.

Did you have a plan for getting this back in somehow?

In some systems I guess people don't have the luxury of growing plant crops for fish feed because the fish species being grown are carnivorous.

Not meant to be a stupid question RX9... but what are you going to feed the "little creatures"... how much, how often... and when are you going to know that they're dead??

If you are harvesting from the system you have to put in nutrients. The system will not work on a "just add water" philosophy. Now those nutrients can be pellets or any food you grow or collect but they must go in otherwise, you are trying to invent the perpetual motion machine.

Okay...
How is the Earth replenished?...? Its an ecosystem, it replenishes itself.
Minerals, - actually I have a thing about minerals - I intend to include a great deal of minerals in the grow media - but for various reasons.
They will not be depleated for years - at least 3 to 5 years anyway.
Some fish are carnivorous, some are not. Fish do eat plants, as long as the plants are only semi-available, isolated by say a 1/4 inch mesh plastic screening that allows most plants to grow through, but does not allow the fish to completely consume them.
Plants, tubifex, etc feed small fish, which can feed the larger fish which people eat. smaller fish, ghost shrimp, etc help maintain the 'aquarium'.
Life reproduces - there is a food chain established, very little needs to be input.

I would really much rather discuss the original intent of my post.

This is a forum for sharing ideas and info.
So far, I am doing al the sharing, answering queston after question, and so far I have not been getting any helpful info.
I do not intend to go over every detail of every process, or to go over and over basic concepts, or divulge every secret about my systems.
I posted on a somewhat specific subject - the waste bactrifier concept.
THAT is what I would like some helpful input on, some ideas, even if they are unproven, or from out in left field.

I want to continuously recycle the fish waste in such a way as to provide the bacteria and plant fertilizing compounds, at maximum, for a worm bed:
(A) Without depleating all the usable resource on the bacteria itself
(B) passing on nutrient-rich liquid, without solids, to the worm bed and plant bed.

This is what I am here to discuss, if you have helpful info or ideas, please contribute; if you don't thats okay, but I don't want to spend all my time typing up all this other stuff, as I really do have other things I am doing, and do not need the aggravation.
Thank you.