Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Well, I was bored one weekend, so I hit Kijiji, picked up a free fridge and started an aquaponics garden... much to my fiancé's shagrin, lol.

I now have 2 buckets inside the fridge, a humidifier in the bottom, lights, a form of hydroponics for the small plants in the freezer (not plugged in, of course), a big garbage can with pumps/filter/return lines, another big garbage can filled with gold fish and the return line from the fluval FX filter (fish bucket drains into brain bucket)... and I'm in the basement for an hour and a half a day, hahaha.

I went with a fridge setup because it's easy to control the temp and humidity, plus I can build my basement bar around it and hide everything away .

I'm having a bit of a problem now though. It's been running for about a month and a half, and I'm seeing LOTS of good growth, but my roots have what looks like sand in them. from what I've seen, it doesn't LOOK like root rot, but can anyone with more experience have a gander and see what they think?

Already a fun experience!!! And my fiancé is more on board now that she's had some stuff from the fridge

A bit hard to see in that photo, but I'd suspect the dark spots are small colonies of nitrifying bacteria growing on the roots.

It actually looks like sand if you get close up... which is strange since there's no sand anywhere in my system, lol.

Nitrifying bacteria... newb here... good thing?

Your fish will die from ammonia poisoning if you dont have any! Fortunately they are everywhere and will multiply wherever there is a food source for them.

ok, good deal

It's strange... I had the roots looking like this once before, but finally got a thermometer in the water and found my heater was running overtime and my water was around 26C, when I dropped it down to 22C, the roots all looked white again and the 'fingers' starting showing up on the roots and I had explosive growth again, now it seems to be back and my growth has slowed right down...

Here's a couple other pics, a little closer up... hoping I'm still good! Lol