System Update - 28th Mar 2012

A heavy down pour two days ago had increased the water level tremendously. On Tuesday morning, I found that the bottom part of the outlet pipe had fallen off into the fish tank. Surprisingly, the siphon still works! I will leave it as it is for now since it's providing more aeration than before. The shortened siphon outlet also slows down the outgoing flow since a shorter downward pipe means less water within the outlet pipe to contribute to the siphoning action by gravity.

Nice water effect!

Today I went to the pasar tani (farmer's market) near my house to buy some vegetables to grow in my system. Although my setup is new, most of the fish tank water as well as the expanded clay was reused from from the old system. There is still plenty of nitrates in the water as I didn't plant much in my old system. So in order to remove those excess nitrates, I will plant Kang Kong (Water Convolvulus), a Pegaga-like plant (is it Pegaga? can anyone confirm?), and the famous aquaponics monster - The Mint... Kang Kong and the Pegaga-like plant will probably do well since they are aquatic plants.

Before I plant them into the grow bed, I'll have to wash their roots first. I can see the Mint anticipating its new found territory.

Pegaga-like plant was planted in bunches of 4 - 5 plants with their roots still intact. For the Mint, I removed their roots and bottom leaves before inserting them into the media. Letting them grow new roots would be better than risking their old conditioned for soil roots to rot. I also had sprinkled some Tomato, Chilli and Kailan seeds 3 days ago. I'll be expecting them to germinate in a few days time. I've also inserted 6 Barbados Cherry seeds in to the growbed - "sigh..." - but I also read that they take 6 to 12 months minimum to germinate and only 5% will be successful.

I threw half of the kangkong into the guppy tank. Some mint and pegaga were also thrown in together. The kangkong will root in the water and provide hiding places for guppy fries.

The other half of the kangkong was thrown in to the larger fish tank for my Pleco to munch. Ah! The water has a green tinge! I am happy for that as I have never had an algae bloom in any of my systems before.

Guppy feeding frenzy; Food consumed in 3 seconds!

Thanks for reading! Will post another update soon...