Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I saw something in a local paper where a new commercial grower has a large media bed with "tens of thousands" of worms as a prefilter to their DWC beds. Not sure if they have additional filtration or not. they mentioned worm tea as being "pumped" downstream and how the plants "thrived" on it. I haven't seen the operation, and know how often the papers get things wrong, but is this possible? Not sure if they even had plants in the gravel bed...it didn't sound like it. But it was in a smaller commercial GH...1800-2000 sq ft. Nice thing is it would be an easy system to build, no expensive drum filters and such. Just curious if anyone has tried this on a 2-3000 gallon FT system.

If they had enough plants in the DWC beds then they wouldn't need plants in the gravel filled GB... then it's just a large bio-filter and waste of space IMO... but yes, if set up correctly it would work as a pre-filter for the DWC.

Damage, it would work, but not the best option in your mind? What would be an ideal prefilter for a larger DWC bed. Combined ease of maintenance, cost, and effectiveness?