Fel's Planted aquarium/Aquaponic combo system!

[Fel]

So I started setting up my tank over a month ago and its finally done!


It consists of a 20g aquarium with two comet goldfish (a tad small I know), a 1.3 cb ft grow bed, and a small 7.5g trash can I'm using as a makeshift sump.

Currently I have an amazon sword, banana plant, and java fern in the aquarium, while up top in my grow bed I have basil, rosemary, garlic chives and green onions.

Let me know what you think!

 

[ImACoolguy]

I've always wanted to try one of these. Very cool dude


Caleb

 

[Fel]

Thanks! Its a nice little setup, though my basil plants were already showing some iron deficiency so I added some iron chelate this morning.

There's one of my poor little basil plants

Hopefully the iron chelate doesn't mess with the fish, I've been unable to find anything that indicates that it would.

 

[Fel]

Sunday Update!

So the fish are still alive! Very exciting, first fish I've had since I was 15 and they seem to be doing very well. They even play where one will swim up to the other they will rub sides and spin in circles together, its entertaining.

Still running zero ammonia and nitrites, my nitrates are still at 40, but most my plants are still settling in, the only thing showing any real growth are the onions, garlic chives, banana plant and amazon sword.

The water is very very yellow.....This is undoubtedly from the chelated iron. Its not actually as bad as it looks, is just the depth of the tank makes it look much worse. Still appears clear in the test tubes.

I added a second 2L bottle for CO2 production, I was running around 7.2 pH and 3 KH, which only had me at about 7 ppm. Speaking of KH I added some KHCO3 today to buffer the system. I'm hoping that with the combo of more CO2 and the bicarb buffer the pH will stay right around the same level.

 

[Fel]

Long overdue update!

So the system has been up and running for a few months now.

The fish are alive and well and growing fast! I'm currently looking into getting a 75+ gallon tank/stand off Craig's list when I find one. I don't know how much a tank/stand should cost so if anyone has any good advise it'd be appreciated. (I know $1/gal for the tank but when they get larger is this true?)

The plants! Well the rosemary, garlic chives and green onions were surviving they weren't thriving. The basil is growing well, but I removed the potted container and now just have two growing. I raised some kale from seed and it's growing like mad! I really can't believe how fast it's growing.

Every morning the plants get sprayed with one of three foliar sprays. One is egg shell/vinegar solution mixed with Epsom salts, second contains iron chelate (DTPA) and lastly is one that contains a kelp extract solution. Before I started this regiment I was having several deficiencies, many iron and what I believe was magnesium.

Here's the grow bed as looks today.


The basil from before


My aquatic plants are doing well too as you can see from this pic the Amazon sword has gotten huge!


I also added some anacharis from trimmings from the other planted tank I set up. The java fern on the pillars is growing slowly but has some huge root mass thing, not sure what the deal with that is.

I also setup a diy co2 system that runs about .7 bps this gives me a Kh of 6 and pH of 7.2 which is only about 12 ppm but I've read some articles showing that when c(14)o2 was injected into water for tomato plants the c(14) was later found in the plant itself indicating that co2 injection could potentially help the plants in the grow bed as well!

My sump also grows some trimmings and houses a betta while he waits for his 10 gallon planted to cycle.


Water parameters stay stable at the following.
pH-7.2
GH-10
KH-6
Ammonia-0
Nitrite-0
Nitrate-10
Temp-74-78 degrees

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[ImACoolguy]

Up until 100+ gallons the price should stay at $1/g.

Stand usually equally as much unless it's cheaply made.

Keep looking. I've found full running 75g systems for $300.


Caleb

 

[fish wrangler]

Though you won't be able to see the fish have you thought about an IBC container? You can find them on Craigslist cheap, cut them in half and you have a 150 gallon "look down" tank. You can use the second half as a media bed, or you could do Deep Water Culture with it.

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