Hello sustainable growers.
My name is Jonathan from Melbourne Aquaponics.
My aim is to help you to grow some sustainable, healthy, and tasty food in your own backyard.
Today, we're going to talk about cleaning the grow bed in aquaponics.
So in this video, I'm going to show you how to clean your aquaponics grow bed and how
to improve the productivity of your system.
But before, download the free aquaponics guide from the description of the video just below.
So when do you need to clean your grow bed?
So there are different times when you need to clean your grow bed.
First is if you see a constant increase of the nitrogen level in your aquaponics setup
and you got some trouble to control the quantity of nitrates you have in your aquaponics system.
In this case it may be because you got too many organic matters in your grow bed and
they are basically clogged in the system and basically they release nitrogen in the system.
Even if you don't feed your fish for several days, you still have a big reserve, a stock
of organic matters that are going to be transformed and that are going to release nitrate in the
system.
It may be too much for the system so that's one point.
If you see a constant increase of the nitrate and you always need to renew the water, it
may be a good time for you to clean the grow bed.
The second thing is if you see that your system is clogged.
So what I mean is that you know we got some particles here.
We got some media so the media is completely free.
Right?
That's just particles of rocks but if you got too much organic matters with the bacteria
it creates a biofilm and it's going to basically clog everything together.
So it's going to create a big block and the particles are not free.
So basically the water can't really go through the media and obviously there is a really
poor aeration.
So if you see some ponds of water on the top of the media that means the water is not draining
well.
That means the system is clogged and that's the perfect time to start to clean your grow
bed.
Another thing that you're going to see if your system is clogged is that the plants
are not going to grow well.
You're going to see that they're going to start to stop growing and some of them are
going to struggle to stay alive and the reason why is because the roots are completely clogged.
So around the roots of the plant there is no oxygen anymore, and therefore, the plants
can't breathe.
So the roots of the plants are starting to rot and therefore, the plant is slowly dying.
Very often, we got people who really start aquaponics and at the beginning they succeed,
but after two years, three years, four years, the system starts to decrease in efficiency
and people just don’t not understand why but at the end they just think, “Oh, finally
it doesn't work” but the reality is that the system is charged, is high in terms of
organic matters and the plants can’t breathe properly, basically.
There is no oxygen anymore.
There is no good aeration around the roots of the plant and therefore, the plants start
to die.
So it’s very simple.
If you’re in this position you just have to clean the system such as what we are doing
today, and it's really going to give a good boost to aquaponics setup because now the
plants can breathe and therefore, they can grow again and the system can be productive
again.
The best time of the year to clean your aquaponics grow bed is in winter because in winter the
plants are not so active so they don't produce so much and also the fish in the water there
is a high concentration of oxygen.
So they’re going to recover quite quickly.
So now how to clean the grow bed, there are different techniques.
So if you have a compressor, an air compressor at home, you can just use it.
You basically inject some air into the setup when the grow bed is full of water.
So basically, it's going to create some bubbles and it’s going to create some nice agitation
and basically it's going to release all the organic matters.
If you have a little setup, you don't have a compressor, we’ve a very small setup such
as the one I have behind me.
You know, 1-2 square meters you can just use a shovel.
So I'm going to show you how we do that.
I'm going to try to remove all the organic matters that are trapped between the rock.
I will plug a pipe and this pipe is going to be linked to basically the end of the grow
bed, so it's going to collect all the organic matters and it's going to send them to the
classic garden.
So that we don't lose anything, we basically recycle all the organic matters.
We don't lose anything in aquaponics.
That’s the idea.
So right now I'm just going to try to plug this thing.
So I plug the pipe here and now I will show you.
I remove the bell siphon here.
So I remove the bell siphon and now the water is able to go directly into
my classic garden.
So when I'm going to clean the grow bed, I'm going to have all the organic matters that
are going to go directly in my garden.
The whole mint is here.
So we can see that the water is very clear at the moment inside the area of the bell
siphon, but in a few minutes it’s going to turn completely black and that's exactly
this water that is going into the garden, the classic garden.
So all the organic matters they’re going to flow to the classic garden.
Here we can see some worms.
So once you put your plants all together then you can plug the system as it was before.
So basically now the water is falling back into the fish tank.
At the beginning the water is going to be a bit dirty, you know, a bit dark but after
a few days the water is going to be clear again.
If you are new to the video, please don't forget to subscribe to the channel and to
download your free guide, free aquaponics guide from the description of the video just
below.
It’s a free guide that is going to help you to build your own aquaponics setup in
the best conditions but also to get some good understanding of the limits of aquaponics
to really produce healthy and sustainable food in your own backyard.
Thank you for watching the video.
See you in the next one.
Bye-bye.
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I really hope to see you soon, and I wish you a fantastic success with aquaponics.
Have a good crop!