Mike,
Why not put a plastic envelope around it? I basically bagged all of mine in the same plastic used to weather seal windows. It helps keep the heat up, and the humidity too. Just big sheets of light plastic, on a light frame.

Bret, do you have any pics of your 10g ebb and flow? I’ve started planning for a new system running off either a 25 gallon, dirty fish tank or a 75g semi-dirty fish tank. I’ve been thinking mainly NFT, but partly because I haven’t seen an EaF system in action with Aquaponics.

Likely a planaria, not harmful at all.

Whoops! Sorry, should have investigated a little closer before I spoke!
Constant problem with the internet.

I don’t think that’s mold. I think that’s just mineral build up on the pellets. The nutrients in the water are not volatile, and won’t evaporate, unlike the water. So they constantly deposit small amounts of the minerals on the clay. This will be especially visible if you have hard water at home. Net result [...]

Also Also – At aquarium and hydroponic stores there’s good iron-only supplements. I did an experiment last year comparing a lightly stocked tank with aquaponics to hydroponics fertilizer. The fertilizer performed better, but not by much, and I think if I had taken the live plants out of the aquarium, I likely would have had [...]

And just to make a counter argument to something a friend said to me, yes, one goldfish cannot reproduce on its own, but if 1 person dumps female goldfish that survives just 2 years, and within that time a male goldfish is also dumped, you’ve just created a population of goldfish. They can find each [...]

Hey Sylvia, I’ve been reading about your experiences with interest, and I’m glad you’re doing Aquaponics! Yay for synergies! I can’t find the message where you spoke with Diana, so I’m making a bit of an assumption here. You’re thinking about dumping your goldfish into your local lake? PLEASE DON’T DO THAT. Goldfish are not [...]

What’s with the matchstick? What are the different tubes for ? So the boxes are watered just through the capillary effect? Nice looking windowfarm! I really like how the alternating side-by-side plants look, but I think with that many plants, the ones on the bottom are likely not going to get as many nutrients as [...]

The reason I used Brown sugar is mostly just that that was what the DIY aquarists I know used.
From what I saw at the time, one of the benefits of the brown sugar was the slowness of the reaction, which allowed the same batch to work over the course of a couple of months.

Sorry for the lateness of my reply. The PH drop isn’t so bad; a lot of aquarists do planted tanks (tanks with plants as the showpieces, rather than the fish) and a lot of them use DIY CO2, like I’d done (that’s where I got the recipe). They experience drops in pH, but nothing too [...]

Also, I found one problem was success.
The plants at the top grew bigger, and their root systems held more water, and they used more water, so after a while significantly less water made it through to the bottom, and what did was clearly less nutrient-full than at the top.

Oh, also, I totally agree with Guppies. That’s a group that will scale up nutrient production as your plants scale up in size!

Sorry, Nate, I agree too. It’s inhumane to grow fish in such tight confines, unless they’re tiny fish and goldfish are not tiny. Since you’re using the term Aquaponics, in theory you’re going to harvest the fish too (long run, I know, but that’s what Aquaponics is about, otherwise it’s just hydroponics with fish poo, [...]

Can I make the suggestion that you try one column with the water heater and one without? I suspect you’ll end up with some problems with the heated water from temperature shock. Room temperature seems best to me, where the plant doesn’t suddenly have to adjust to a difference. Alternatively to a water heater, you [...]

I had decent results producing peas and lettuce with CFLs. I wrapped the whole thing in an reflective emergency blanket, for one, and then made sure I got CFLs that had a high enough spectrum of output. 6500 kelvin or higher is good. You can find more info about spectrum if you look into growing [...]

Oh, sorry, “pro” #2 for Clay – you can form it on your own safely, and can be to any specification you want.
Also, can be made extremely pretty.

Hey, I was thinking about this for a while too, and there’s a couple of non-glass options: 1) copper piping – pros – Already made for plumbing, made to pretty exacting standards, lots of parts available, also see last element in cons – cons – Leaches copper. Not in amounts that I would consider worse [...]

This is a great way to increase the water pressure without using a 4ft deep tank. Thanks for sharing! I had a similar idea, since I was using a 2′ deep fish tank raised 3 feet off the ground, and maintenance was a huge issue. In it (warning: untested) the waterline comes out of the [...]

How is it in a start/stop cycle like the 15m/1hr Windowfarm cycle? I had no problem starting my own to go about 4 ft with 18inches submergence, but when it went through the cycle the restart was frequently problematic. With my new set up I may have avoided it, but I’m just curious how it [...]