Fishy water.

I have just been informed by a distant friend, how this year she had threw the dirty fish water from the fish tank out onto her roses and other border plants. Which, noticeably caused better growth.

Could fishy water really be good for the garden?

It seems so!

 

Not so much the water but the malm from the bottom makes a good mulch for roses etc. All those fishy nitrates (essentially fish poo decomposition products from Ammonia > nitrite > nitrate) are also good feed. Make sure there is no chance of run off back into the pond though

 

Hi Greenfingers,
It`s very effective.

I`ve grown bird eye chilli`s to over 3ft high solely using aquarium water (no solids and no soil)
They flowered and produced fruit too
A google search for "aquaponics" will likely return lots of related info.

 

I always throw my aquarium water on the garden when doing a partial change, it's just like liquid fertiliser.

 

You could save yourself a job and recycle it.

If the nitrates are removed by plants, no partial water changes are necessary.
Only a small topup needed now and then due to evaporation and transpiration by the plants.

It`s quite easy to set up a small indoor bed to grow fresh basil etc for kitchen use.
It`s relatively organic too, depending what you feed the fish

The aquarium pump can power it and being in use anyway costs no more to run.

Theory is good but does it actually work?



Here`s the Bird Eye chilli`s (5 weeks old) from seed indoors using nothing but aquarium fishwater.
I germinated the seed in Feb and this pic was taken in March.
Considering they were growing indoors to one side of a window they didn`t seem to mind the low light conditions.

Fresh kitchen herbs (or chilli`s even) happy fish and virtually no effort :D

 

Sounds logical and ecological Hex.

 

It may be something that will appeal to more "normal" people eventually, especially with only 10% of the water usage compared to conventional veg growing.

There`s a lot of impressive veggie pics and info on this website which show what can be done.

http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/index.htm

 

I found a very useful resource helping me set up an automated system for this, it works great and once it's up and running, it's virtually automated.

You can find the resource here

Aquaponics home system

Enjoy!

 

Looks like a book advert to me..
the Backyard Aquaponics website has all the info you`ll ever need and its free :wink:

http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/information.html

Edit, AV8 appears to have registered on the garden web forums today too. Just to post...the same dodgy book advert lol
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/hydro/msg0418510811252.html?7