Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

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Filtration, baby!

I raided the garden center bargain table at Lowes the other day, where they put all the plants that are dying because they're growing out of their pots, marked down to ridiculously low prices. I got like 6 plants out of each pot! There are also a few African violets and two miniature roses (for Bullwinkle). I have a baby fig tree in there also, still in its pot but partially buried so it can wick up moisture, and a lance-leafed sundew (carnivorous plant) also still in its pot, while I work up the courage to take away its special soil mix and see if it will survive aquaponically.

I still have to replace the ratty towel curtain on top. I think I'm going to put a black valance around it...still working that out.

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Next you'll be piping Barry White music to your plants...

Hey, it might help hem propagate! Though I find Bill Withers to be more effective.

Carnivorous plants need bad soil. That is why they are carnivorous. Though they are also adapted for bog environments. Who knows, maybe it will thrive so well that it will be saying "feed me Seymore!"and sing show tunes...

So... You're throwing a carnivorous plant... into an AP system... in your bedroom.... Mental note - don't play Chicken or Russian Roulette with G2N....

Heh. Probably not. I just have to make it aesthetically unoffensive (I thought "pleasing" might be too much of a stretch, so I only promised unoffensive) because hubs was worried it would make the bedroom look bad.

I'm confused.

This actually happens frequently, so it's not all that surprising. The current cause of it is that I got tilapia for my greenhouse system, but they are currently living in my aquarium system, for reasons I've already detailed in my greenhouse thread, so I won't belabor them here.

But that's the problem. Now I don't know which thread to talk about them in.

Anyway, here's a photo of them chowing down with the convict cichlids in the pleco-powered system:
I'm not a great judge of fish emotions yet, but they seem happy enough, so far.

The water looks crystal clear as well.

Unless you faked the entire scene with a few fish mobiles hanging in a fish tank full air.

I used to have super clear water until I started feeding my fish a different pellet. Now they live in slightly tannin stained water.

But, yep. Thay look like happy fish doing normal fishy things, like not swimming upside down.

What about the ones on the top of he aquarium swimming upside down?

Those are the fish that live in upside-down land. They're *supposed* to be upside-down. It's the fish equivalent of mirror-land, where the guy who looks just like you only backwards lives.

Flo? FlooOOooo? Has anyone seen my sister?

I've been rather surprised at how well the tilapia are doing as aquarium fish. I don't know why it surprises me, since all aquarium fish really are pond/river fish. I even put the 4 smallest in the giant aquarium with my tetras, since I was developing some string algae growth in there, and they seem to love the stuff. They're happily schooling with the 40 neons and 9 phantom tetras in there, and racing wildly to the top any time someone walks by, hoping for food.

I ordered 30 fingerlings, received 36, and 6 died. Pretty accurate prediction of attrition rate on the part of the seller!

Ten of the tilapia out of the pleco tank are now in the greenhouse. I meant to move them all, but turned out not to have an appropriate-sized net for the pleco tank, so it was a wonder I even managed to catch those ten. Anyway, they're doing well, pigging out on algae.

As for the pleco system, the plants are going crazy. I can safely say that African violets and miniature roses THRIVE in an aquaponic system. I've had to cut the roses back by 50% just about every other week, to keep them out of the lights. The other plants are all doing well, too.



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Two miniature roses that were transplanted from the same pot, at the same size. The one on the left went into my pleco-powered aquaponic system. The one on the right went in good potting soil and onto my southern-exposure kitchen windowsill, where it would get plenty of sunshine and I would remember to water it.

Aquaponics is awesome.

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