doing a small scale experiment with 15gal tank, 5 gal grow bed. system seems stable, but pH drops as water evaporates. feeder fish seem to be fine all the way down to 5.0, but most of the (feeder) goldfish go belly up at anything below 6, it seems. i let the pH go down to about 5.3, then top off the res with some hard tap water and some pH up if necessary to 7.0. current population is about 30 feeders and 10 goldfish.

couple of questions for you guys.

i'm a first-time grower and trying different methods: soil/orgo, bubble buckets, aero/fog, and aquaponic. everything's got its ups and downs, but overall things are going well with the exception of the bubble buckets. i'm not running chillers so temps are around 75F. out of 6 buckets, 2 are flourishing, but 4 were infected by slime due after i added some beneficial brew to them. after dipping everything in bleach water (including baskets and roots), 2 recovered beautifully, 1 died, and 1 is surviving. some people swear by adding bennie tea to hydro, but i'm going to stick with sterile using H2O2 and bleaching out the buckets every once in a while. i'm getting a little off-topic...

now the aquaponic experiment is going really well. it's so little maintenance and growth really blows me away. also works great as a cloner. just stick it and forget it! planning to run a suckit bucket off of the fish tank. have you guys done this? seems like it should work: same ebb/flow type setup. if the aquaponic suckit bucket works well, i'm planning to convert all of my bubble buckets over.

another question is how to add potassium organically. i buried a sliver of banana peel in the grow bed the other day. i've been away, so i'm not sure how well it's decomposing, but is there any reason not to do this?

last question: i think i came across a video on youtube a while ago of a guy saying he had added (or was going to add) compost worms to the grow bed. supposedly, they can tolerate wet environments. any idea how to integrate compost worms or a compost bin/bed into the system?

thanks in advance!
haole420 Reviewed by haole420 on . Aquaponics-Success Story I am a professional Aquaponist. That is I set up aquaponic systems for people. This is using aquatic animals like fish, that produce waste, which is broken down by bacterias into uptakable n-p-k. This is all organic, and my brand new prototype needs no water removal, no flushing, no cleaning, and it is totally self-sustaining. All one does is feed the fish and top off every 3 weeks. I even have automated fish feeders. I'm a medical marijuana patient, and I've decided to use my system Rating: 5