Aquaponics - My algae farm

My algae farm is working better than I expected.

Unfortunately I expected no algae at all, and got plenty.

But it seems there is a cure.

It turns out algae, like pretty much everything else, needs light and nutrient.

The nutrient I cant do much about, but I can definitely cut off it's light supply. It turns out the fish prefer to feel safer in semi darkness as well, so all I need to do is cover my fish tank.

I chose blue.

All that junk on the ground is the inevitable result of  letting me near PVC with a saw.

I think if I cover the top half of the blue bit where it's visible, and just leave a blue skirt, it might even look ok.

It's a very necessary thing to do as my water now looks like this.

That faint dark smudge on the bottom left is the bottom. It's only 1 metre away and you cant really see it.

That's not so good.

My big concern now is that when all that algae dies, there is going to be a huge spike in ammonia and nitrite as it breaks down, so I've stopped feeding.

On the up side, I have my new grow bed available to take up some of the workload in processing the waste, so I might be ok. I also bought some more media so I can get the second new grow bed online hopefully before the ammonia starts being produced.


My 120 things is 20 years sometimes turns an aquaponics system into an algae farm.