Aquaponics - Constant flood growth

My new constant flood grow beds seem to be working.

And my new constant flood grow bed plants seem to be flourishing.

The spinach has gone crazy.

At least I think the spinach has gone crazy.

It might be silver beet.

But suddenly the words "Silver beet" don't seem to mean anything, so I might be me that's gone crazy.

I think I've thought those words too often during the construction of this post.


I'll stop.

And move on to whatever this is.

This has gone crazy as well.

It's either cucumber or rock melon.

The lettuce in the original grow bed (planted from seedlings) looked like this at various stages of its life, and also seem to be enjoying a good growth rate.

Perhaps the tomato plants were eating all the nutrient. I still have it in a bucket, but it's growth has slowed since being ripped up and cut back to just a few stems.

That blue thing on the left is the bucket with the tomato plants in it.

 All the water for this grow bed goes through the tomato bucket first until I find a proper home for my hacked tomatoes.

I also added two algae eating fish that like to suck onto the side of fish tanks, and eat whatever grows on them. These I put in the old fish tank (now a sump tank) to keep the algae down.

I haven't seen them since.

For some strange reason I didn't take any photo's of them.

As far as I know they are doing fine, but these days there is a stack of plumbing going into and out of the little sump tank, so there are plenty of places for a tiny pair of fish to hide.

I was promised they would love their new home, and grow to be around 10cm long, but I have also been told that there are no cold water varieties of this kind of fish.

Both pieces of advice came from the same aquarium shop.




120 Things in 20 years. Crazy? Growth from my new constant flood aquaponics grow bed? Sucky fish? Only time will tell.