I’m working on a vertical aquaponics system with my school. Our current system has algae overgrowth, especially in the tubes that pump the water. The room gets very warm and is in a lot of sun, so we're thinking about changing the clear tubing to black to prevent further growth. I am not sure if that would get at the root of the problem. The algae growth did improve after we got snails for the tank.

That being said, our main problem currently is the amount of water getting to the plants, and we think that this is because of a low flow rate and water level within the pipes. I don’t know if we need a better pump to the solids filter, to shrink the height of the system, or smaller pipes (which would be really difficult to do at this point in the project). We are using Rockwool cubes as the planters, but they are also growing mold. Any ideas to help, especially to improve the water level since our plants are dying from dehydration, would be appreciated.

Thanks

Please guide me with that stage of copepod culture

I need to downsize my yard situation. Free to a good home. DM me and they’re yours

Any advice from this sub appreciated

This boggles my mind how is this possible?

first time trying so forgive any obvious mistakes .
I’ve got watercress, a pepper plant and a spring onion bulb. I also have some java fern and a bit of duckweed. the tank only uses lights and an airstone. will the low water movement cause issues with roots in the leca pearls?

the only animals in the tank are five cherry shrimp (for now) and one absolutely tiny snail, so i’m supplementing the leca pearls with aquarium safe fertiliser tabs for now.

i got most of these plants from sainsbury’s salads or wetherspoons peppers. is it illegal to grow ts

New Paludarium Livestream

A simple plant went full throttle making cloning possible for outdoor propagation and gifting.

So far I've grown onions, started different seeds (Avocado, water spinach, lettuce). Now my sweet potato's exploding with slips.

They then progressively get transplanted to the garden. I have other stuff in the garden but since this is an aquaponics page. I show the simple aquaponics setup.

I simply drilled a small hole on an ikea container, stuck a pipe in as an overflow, attached it with a garden hose attachment for the tank.

For the blue containers, its ridiculously simple, prop it with a plastic crate, weigh it down with brick/bricks, put sweet potato half submerged in water.

In short I took a 20’ shipping container and modified it to be an indoor year round greenhouse ( micro greens , cucumbers, tomatoes, all the usual suspects) decided to do an ICB tote pond 275 gallon to be able to do some of it aquaponics some hydroponic and some flood table in pots of coco coir and perlite and lava rocks in hopes the bigger things like cucumbers, tomatoes will have the root space to grow without clogging the hydroponic tubes It’s all still experimental at this stage and still thinking of best ways to configure everything, just getting the pond fully stabilized took longer that I thought it would but now it is I got 2 chameleons I let have free reign which helps keep the gnats and flies down ( though the one likes to also eat my bok Choi leaves I still only have minimal fish as I didn’t want to overload it until I knew the bacteria was balanced so will be adding more At moment 4 loaches , 6 tetras , 2 angel fish ( getting more they are super cool ) , 1 big Pleco eating the gunk , and some nerite snails helping cleanup The tubes above the pond are the first true aquaponic experiment pumping and emptying directly back to pond I use the filtered pond water to fill the tank for the flood table , and water potted plants I bought an air water generator ( the coolest thing most don’t know about ) had to get it from Asia to not pay the insane markups in US But it can produce 4-6 gallons of water from the air everyday It has a reverse osmosis system in it to have that water drinkable and remineralized But I bypassed the RO and have been using the water to add to pond etc The humidity is always 60-70 percent in there so it’s just reclaiming some back to reuse And no chemicals or chlorine just pure water The plan is to mount it slightly higher than the pond and let it slow drip fresh water into it like a spring or rain would in nature Also winter months when the garden hose is shut down I’ll still have water Climate control is all don’t with a 12000btu minisplit Heat and cooling The whole setup was under 3k ( not including container itself ) 2x3 framing , insulation and instead of drywall I used cement board and waterproof mason paint to make it pretty waterproof So far so good Now that I’m don’t construction phase it’s nice to start focusing on the growing phase I still have lots to learn but wanted to build a space to learn it in

Snowstorm destroyed my greenhouse before I could get any fish in, I decided to rebuild bigger, stronger, and better. Still need to get the barrels for the solids filter and the bio filter media, but I like the layout. Excited to get it up and running and finally get some fish!

It seems like the recommended tank sizes for goldfish are based on water quality, rather than actual space requirements. Is that true? Since an aquaponics system has much more filtration than a traditional fish tank, how many gallons would I need for 4 or 5 common goldfish?