Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Breakdown would be in the beds though - and there is no shortage of DO there, particularly in the drain cycle. Vegge would only be saturated on the flood cycle.

qn, the worms in the beds, what type would they be? Just garden worms, or composting worms?

Aquaponics is just like hydroponics except the nutrients arn't chemical derivitives. So in order to use a range of natural nutrients why not just affix a thin tube from your worm bed to the delivery line between your fish tank and your grow beds and the natural venturi effect ( suction and delivery) will blend your fish waste and your redworm compost castings together to feed the plants. That way the plants should have reduced the potencey of the nutrient levels before the water is returned to the fish and only a small amount of worm castings can be distributed at any one time.

I have put both in mine. I'm not sure the earthworms survived, but the compost ones definitelly did and multiplied.

Perhaps a pizza autofeeder to drop the worms into the fish tank?

I am attracted to the almost similarly harvested soldier fly larvae. They climb up an incline when done feeding, and will easily drop into a pail...or pond.
Self harvesting fish food. Now that's the life.

Well, that's something you can do with the occasional casualty too, isn't it? If you put a dead fish(away from the house people:) on a tray leading up to a pail, the flies should lay eggs, right? Does the source need to be fattier than the occasional tilapia?

Personally I'm more interested in composting worm trays, and I know maggots have been brought up in other threads; but using larvae every now and then can't be a bad thing.

Hi,

I'm a firm advocate of using fly larvae for fish food (or anything else that keeps them from developing into adult flies).

For all of the revulsion that they induce, maggots are only as bad as the stuff that they were laid in when they were eggs. Bread soaked in milk is fairly benign.

Most fly larvae have to clean themselves before they commence the transformation into adult flies. In so doing, they crawl out of the bait and into something that will facilitate that cleaning......like bran.

Of course, they can just crawl out of the bait and fall directly into the tank, too (as you've suggested). For sheer simplicity, I like Jaymie's idea.

Gary

I have been a bit lazier than that, I just added the worms to my gravel grow bed, this was an attempt to minimise the distrurbance to the gravel post harvest - the best way to get rid of left over roots and such. they have been in there for about 2 months and seem to be very happy. the best bit is that every know and then one feel like traveling andslips down the hose to become free feed.