I should add to that… You want a filter that’s rated for 600 gallons. If you’re just running buckets manually and not pumping water out to grow beds that will help filter it, you’ll end up with a huge excess of ammonia and you’re fish will all die… You’ll also need air, but because you’re not feeding plants with it, the fish will probably be fine if you just have a pond fountain running.
Good luck, and keep me in the loop, I’m curious how it goes for you!! 
yep, by design. this way algae doesn’t form in the biobed. kinda funks stuff up and adds to the waste problem. i wouldn’t be too worried about the couple square inches where the water flows into the bed. just me though.
pretty sure i’ve seen him put tea directly into a system with fish in it. he wouldn’t do that if it would jeopardize the fish. not to mention why would you build a system with a tea maker in the design if you weren’t supposed to use it? i seen where he said you could add compost tea once a week if your plants need it. it’s not an ‘all the time’ thing.
the entire system is a biofilter when you have an airlift pump working for you 
would you happen to know the specs on your air pump? that’s one of the ‘aha’ moments for me. watching someone make a biofilter and then looking at my airlift and see… that’s exactly what the airlift does. it’s the same thing! 30L/min in airstones is the same 30L/min in an airlift.
if a person wanted to, you could have an airlift pump connected to a sump tank (sitting on ground), pumping up to a fish tank set so it’s almost chest high at the top for easy servicing. the fish tank could have a pipe siphon overflow so the tank can never run low on water, but also supplies an overflow which feeds your plant bed. your plant bed will rest somewhere between the fish tank’s water level (and not higher) and the sump tank. you could do any number of systems for the grow beds. before the grow bed you could place a radial flow settler or swirl filter, basically anything you desire for filtration.
the problem i see with this is that the sump tank is largely wasted, sitting there doing nothing. that’s why the OA system uses float beds to help utilize more surface area while adding to the water volume of the system.
i am confused here. a filter for 600 gallons? an hour? my buckets will be supplied with my airlift. i want a one-and-done system with minimal labor
my air pumps are a little stronger than a traditional air pump for most small fish tank setups. i’m really puzzled lol
certainly! i will try to explain it to the best of my ability as well.
I think the 600 gallon remark was directed at me. He accidentally hit your reply. 
I did? Crap, lol… Yup, you’re right @Magu, that was for you… That’s what I get for replying at 2am after 4 straight hours of vaping trying to get to sleep 
Right, but it’s those top couple of inches that will be hit first by the solids in the water, so that’s where you’ll need some help.
For sure, more natural nutes won’t be bad. But I don’t think I made my point completely (yay baked replying, lol). The tea supplements not having worms in the system to breakdown the rest of the solids.
I’ll see if I can find one of the sites I was reading about adding worms. It talks about how the worms break stuff down further so the system stays cleaner, the plants’ roots stay cleaner so they can absorb nutes better, etc. Apparently the worm poop ends up adding iron and calcium from the bigger fish solids, so the plants are better fed.
The whole system isn’t a biofilter. Look at Rob Bob’s videos again and watch for the tub of k5. Those plastic pieces are your biofilter. The bacteria that grows on them is why a system takes 6+ months to fully cycle before it is producing at fully capacity.
One of the OA videos shows how the system will never get plugged, which is really cool, but also shows it won’t break down the poop completely.
I have done a system with an elevated tank. It was definitely my favourite as far as the plants went, but I had the plants in the sump, so the water level changed easy too much. If I were to do that again I would definitely have a lower sump, but that was a great system (until the overflow syphon got an air bubble, stopped moving water and my basement flooded 
. I’ve very lucky to have a very understanding Mrs, especially since it’s her house 
.)
i just have to say i think it’s cool that even in 2024 aquaponics still has many unknown variables! lots of testing and learning to be had.
as far as nutrition goes, i do see in the OA manual that worm teas are added to introduce all of the trace elements into the system. i will say, worms being in the system seems a bit strange to me. i’m not against it at all, it just doesn’t seem as practical as everything else they teach. according to their manual, 100% of fish wastes are dissolved and nitrified in this system. i guess we’re at the point where it’s time to put everything into reality and start testing.
as far as the whole system being a biofilter, you need to think about it while stoned some more every surface you have available with ammonia-rich water and nitrifying bacteria is ‘biofilter’. the water itself is a biofilter as well. sure, the plastic bits help increase surface area but every drop of water also has that same capacity, IF dissolved oxygens levels are high enough. if they’re not high enough, no bacterial growth.
can you provide a link to the moment where he says that? i don’t recall every hearing him say that, and i’ve watched most of his videos at least a dozen times by now. i mean the OA manual even says:
“Aquaponics with the bio-filter/cinder beds allow 100% recovery of all fish food
nutrients. Systems that use a “solid settling” tank to separate the fish solids and
then extract them from the system lose up to 40% of the nutrition. I do not teach such
systems. I feel I paid for the fish food, and I want the 100% recovery of all of the
nutrition that is available.”
i think the 40% statistic is whack. some of this is uncharted territory, and it seems no one other than Olomana Gardens has really taken this methodology and really explore it more. it seems most instances of a working setup are strictly offline. there’s only a handful of videos where a person can see the whole setup running as intended; most of it is explanation videos (which are great too).
i’m ordering 20lbs of hydroton today! when it gets here i’ll figure out my biobed/fish tank situation and get some fish! really eager to be getting my nitrifying bacteria colonized!!
I found the link!
The first pic on that page also shows what your grow bed will look like without worms in there to break up the extra fish waste… how do I know?? Because that’s what every grow bed I’ve ever build looks like after a while 
lol, not quite. The bacteria need a stable place to live, so they can really work, that’s what the biofilter (the bioballs) is for.
it’s in the video where he stuffs a bunch of what looks like fleece bits into the “fish tank” (no fish in the system), and those bits come out of the tank, through the piping, through the air lift and come out into the grow bed. He’s literally saying the system can’t get clogged (which is awesome), but it’s also not going to break down the poop.
I’m really, really excited for you to get your system up and running , a lot of what I’ve been saying will make a LOT more sense after a couple months of pushing water (car accident, concussion, the ability to describe a scene of simple blocks sitting on a table is something I have had to practice), and you’ll also be another aquaponic grower here! 
If you want to get your system up and running faster… no joke, and old school way to introduce a bunch of ammonia into your system, is to pee in it yourself (I’m actually being totally serious, although I’ve never done it myself, you can absolutely research it, hahaha)
thanks for the link! i’ll check it out after this post.
ahh, i do see you are correct. maybe it’s just the way he phrased it but it makes sense. upon review of his most recent videos, i do see he went with an airlift into a radial flow settler about 4 years ago. all of the ‘tech’ discussed so far is about a decade old by now, and probably much longer from the guys Glenn M. learned it from.
there’s a whole hour long video here which details most of their operation. it seems that once a system gets going, it’s fine for a while but occasionally they do need to clean out their beds. a radial flow settler or swirl filter would much easier to keep the system lasting for a long time. a year or two on a decent size setup would be fine, but eventually i think you’re right… accumulation is bound to happen.
i’ve seen Rob bob comment a couple of times about cycling a system without fish by adding small amounts of ammonia, and organic nutrition, so i may consider that as well. i guess it depends on what the ammonia and nutes cost. i’d rather just buy the fish and let the natural processes happen.
i’m designing my system now so i’ll try to post a photo of it once i’m done ^^
Yeah, I guess is does depend on how often you want to clean out your grow beds… I’m uber lazy and don’t ever want to 
. So I’m trying to find the balance so everyrhing is good to go with as little maintenance as possible .
Sweet man! I can’t wait to see!!
This lady knows her worms 
. I had to admit, I had doubts about worms in the clay pebbles, but… Yup, and they just hang around in the roots, so they don’t try to escape 
After my insane, stupid hair cut (don’t trim whole stoned 🤦)
Its coming back fairly well. Another few weeks and they’ll be coming down.
Ahh, what could have been 🤷, lol.
I found red worms at a local pet store, so yesterday I picked up 25 of those and 10 more goldfish (I lost 2 last week, I think I added a little too much iron 🤦). I put the worms, and their dirt, into a sieve and dipped them repeatedly into a tub of water from the system. Once the worms were washed off and clean, I put them in clumps onto the grow bed… Damn did they ever dive into the clay pebbles quickly! All worms were gone in under 30 seconds, poof. Hopefully they’ll be happy little eaters!
With how the roots hold onto the clay pebbles, and the worms apparently wanting to live in roots in an aquaponics system, I’m curious what I’m going to have to do to get the worms out of the roots when it’s harvest time… One more fun thing to do in the process .
Worms don’t like light, so they’ll stay in the bed… And I figure worst case they fall into the fish tank and the goldfish get a treat .
wow that’s good to know! i think you may have finally convinced me to run worms in my biobeds. let us know how that goes. if they have any problems or anything like that.
since cannabis has a lot deeper roots that most food crops, i think it might be better to have a 12" deep container. what do you think about a deeper root zone?
any chance you could hang a light bulb in there? it’s really tough to see your plants with the light exposure. when taking photos i always either turn my lights down to 25%, or i’ll use the light bulb in the room for light. as is, it’s really tough for us to see what you have there.
i have to say i’m really encouraged by what you’ve done here. what i see i like. i have discovered some personal challenges in my aquaponic adventures but i also found that “where there is a will there is a way”. i think we should be looking into de-coupled aquaponics systems for cannabis. food crops are less demanding. for cannabis a decoupled system allows you to mix nutes for the plants which don’t affect the fish.
Yes, I totally agree, I would love the root zone to be deeper, this bed was pretty much the best I could find without building something myself. That said, the roots spread out width-wise and provide quite a bit of stability.
I’ve been building a new system in my head… It’ll use the space a LOT more efficiently, I figure I should have about triple the grow bed space. It’s going to take me a grow or two to put it together though, wood is bloody expensive!
Unfortunately, the pics are automated… I wrote an app that takes a pic every N minutes, saves it to a yyyy/mm/dd folder structure, and also turns all the pics in the year, month and day folders into an animated gif. So there’s not much I can do… Next time I check on them though, I’ll take a pic with my phone .
I’m really happy to hear I’m encouraging people to give it a shot! I’ve had so much fun with it over the years, building systems, fixing flaws in those system, it’s been great… I really hope you have as much fun as I do
Well, as sad as these buds are (WHY did I over prune 🤦), here are a few pics with my phone
I will fill in the name of this strain when I get back downstairs to check the label
[Edit] This is Pure Power Plant
This is xtreme haze, it was bonsai’d 🤦
This is pure kush, also bonsai’d 🤦
I flipped them Dec 2nd, so they’re about 7ish weeks? I was trying to clone the pure kush and xtreme haze, but it’s not looking like the cuttings are going to survive… Time to build a cloner!
They might resin up and get frosty. Do you have a uvb lamp?
This is the light I’m working with…
BESTVA 2000W Led Grow Light 4x3ft LM301B Diodes Reflector Full Spectrum LED Growing Lights for Indoor Plants Greenhouse Double Switch Vegetable & Bloom Growing Lamps Actual Power 275Watt https://a.co/d/gveOLid
I don’t see uvb listed though… Hmm, maybe I can steal the Mrs’ daughters, her lizard didn’t make it so the light is just sitting there, lol (yes, dark, I know, but that’s my sense of humour 
)
I have used a “reptisun” lizard light several times. I think they make the plants more frosty but I have no objective proof.
I started looking into it after you asked… If I haven’t found anything concrete saying it helped, but nothing said it was bad, so… 🤷 Why not give it a shot
I forgot to tell you that a lizard lamp needs to be relatively new. After they are 1 year old they dont produce much uv light.
That’s good to know! For both the plants and if another bearded dragon is coming into the house
