Let’s transform an aquarium into aquaponics 🙂
An incomplete ecosystem
Having an aquarium at home is really cool. The aim is to recreate a natural ecosystem inside but it is actually an incomplete ecosystem, the nitrogen cycle in not closed. We feed the fish and the population of bacteria present into the aquarium tank are transforming the ammonia into nitrite and the nitrite into nitrate. The nitrate accumulates into the tank and the concentration increase. That is the reason why some water must be replaced every few weeks.
Close the cycle, from aquarium to aquaponics!
If you transform your aquarium into an actual aquaponics ecosystem, you close the cycle. Therefore, the nitrate generated produce some nice vegetables. As a resultm it allows you to minimize or stop the water changes. In my view it makes things way more interesting. In this video we will review karthik’s setup. He transformed a tropical aquarium into aquaponics by placing a growbed on the window. There are several things to do in order to convert an aquarium into aquaponics. Therefore, we will see together the good and weaker points of this creation.
A good start
Overall, this little aquaponics setup is very cute and a good way to start an indoor aquaponics. The little fish tank contains tropical fish. The transformation into a little indoor aquaponics setup thanks to the growbed is a good idea. Here, Karthik converted the fish tank thanks to a little water pump and a simple growbed. Indeed, it is a very basic setup that anyone can reproduce at home.
The media selected is very well adapted to little indoor aquaponics setups and small scale aquaponics. We develop this point into the video. Here, you will learn how to build a little ornamental indoor aquaponics with very low budget. We can also call it a “cheap aquaponics”. Also, a tropical aquaponics around 27C is a good thing for the bacteria and boost their productivity.
Flood and drain system
Having a water level variation system into the growbed is still a very important thing to focus on. Hence, this is probably the major improvement I would recommend Karthik to make into his low budget tropical indoor aquaponics system. Having a flood and drain system in the growbed means having the fish tank water level moving of few centimeters. If you really want to have a constant water level into the fish tank you will then need to equip your setup with a sump tank.
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 🙂
