Aquaponics water level is key for the success of the plants and bacteria growth.
What classic gardeners know
When I re-pot an indoor plant, I generally add some gravels / scoria / clay balls on the first centimetres in the bottom of the pot. This ensure a good drainage of the pot and avoid the plants to seat on a saturated substrate. It is impportant to avoid the roots to rot due to the possible anaerobic environment. Most gardeners don’t understand how plants can grow in aquaponics. The conditions are wet and most gardeners imagine that the plant roots will rot.
It is important to understand the difference between a wet media and an anaerobic environment.
Wet means presence of moisture in the media. Anaerobic means that the media is saturated, and the oxygen can’t access to the plant roots.
The magic of aquaponics water level
In aquaponics the grow-bed is equipped with a flood and drain system called “bell siphon”. It allows the water level to go up and down several times per hour which aerate the media. When the water level drops, the media is in contact with the air from the atmosphere and the plant roots can breathe.
Finally, there is a zone between the plant roots and the plant leaves called the neck. most plants don’t like to have the neck in a moist environment. For that reason, we will keep the top first centimetres dry. We therefore want our bell siphon set with a maximum aquaponics water level 3 to 6cm below the media surface.
A dry media surface will also keep algae, moss and fungus away from the grow-bed surface.
You will probably be interested to discover Jonathan’s six steps to build and manage an Aquaponics system. Click here to access for free! Thanks and good reading 🙂
