Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello Backyard Aquaponics!

I am back again with another question for you, hopefully someone will be interested in answering my questions.


Background:
I am building a decorative aquaponics system where a 35 gallon fish tank will go under a clay media grow bed under a south facing window. The pump will be going into the fish tank and pumping the water up to a type of waterfall that feeds the flood/drain bed.

Question:
I would like to add an external filter to this setup so that I can keep the water crystal clear. I cannot have the water being tan, green, golden, or any color. Having the pump in the fish tank means a lot of small food/waste particles floating through the system. I was thinking that I would have an external filter that would take water from the top of the tank and run it through some coarse -> fine filters and maybe even a UV filter. What would be the best type of filter to look into?

I am not sure the paradigm of crystal clear water is compatible with Aquaponics. That tinge of color means the system is healthy.

Am I correct in thinking that the water tinge is fish waste, partially dissolved food, and algae? I was making the assumption that most of the nutrients that the plants require were smaller than any mechanical filter could remove. I was thinking that with the pump pulling from the bottom of the tank, the grow bed would see quite a bit of the solids before the rest was filtered off of the top of the FT. Please correct me if I'm wrong!

The tinge is bioslime, and that is where all the AP action really takes place.

Bioslime = bacteria?

Don't get me wrong, the water can and should be clear, it is just that all of the surfaces should not be. The slime harbors the nitrifying bacteria, and protects the fish. You can throw some Plecos in there to clean up the surfaces some, but perhaps a better way of looking at an ap system is to celebrate the bioslime, not clean it off.

I would think that there would be plenty of surface for bacteria in the media bed without needing the glass' surface area. Especially with a low stocking density in a roomy display tank. A pleco might be a good addition too.

Again the bioslime also protects the fish.

If the fish needed the slime to survive, I wouldn't think that aquariums would work.

If the waterfall is in the sun, it'll bloom in algae too.

I believe aquariums have bio slime too. Years back when I had one (or my parents did), we had to use the magnet thingis to scrap it off the glass. There is usually more fish in AP, so more biofilm.

When I first started AP, I was planning a living wall, so tall and upright, with gravel inbetween chicken mesh, and water coming in from the top. I abandoned it because I wouldn't be able to keep the algae way.

The feed and nutrients tan the water.

There is a whole industry to medicate those fish too.

One of these days I am going to do a thread on micro systems. Too small and too large are unsuitable (imho) for what you see on here, well most of the time.
Don't put your pump in the FT
Use a discrete canister filter, that gives you mechanical and biological filtration (and UV if you want)
F&D or Continuous flood are not required, use NFT or Continuous Flow (my favourite) .
Drill a small hole about 2" below FT water level on the intake pipe to the canister filter. It saves you from doing stupids with the pipework and emptying your FT.
Accept the fact that if you use a waterfall (near light) its going to grow things you can make it look natural with for example moss.

Ok Enough of that.

LETTUCE, it's very feasible to run a fishtank with some sort of aquaponics system as you describe, but I'd recommend Sleepe's suggestion of a canister filter and NFT, which I have done successfully in the past.

I had the NFT bolted outside my bedroom window and plumbing to/from the canister filter lines. The biggest challenge I foresee for you is keeping the stain out of the water, but I wonder if you really need to worry about that - most aquariums have some kind of driftwood which leaks tannins and stains the water, but it rarely adversely affects the presentation of the tank (and in certain tank types, is even desirable). If you were concerned about it, you could always do partial water changes (keeping in mind you'll lose some nutrients with it) which is generally good fish tank practice anyway.

Hi Lettuce,
I have a 55 gallon aquarium running and had used an API external filter, they have one that has an easy to change filter system, that doesn't need priming like a lot of canister filters do. The water may never be crystal clear but it's clean and I just clean the glass every so often.