For urban farmers like myself, small spaces need every advantage they can get in order to be as bountiful as possible. Build this self watering, small space garden on a balcony or any other small places where growing large amounts of food is difficult!
Remember to let your fish tank cycle for about a week before adding fish and plants to the system.
Materials:
Drill
1 inch hole saw (or spade bit)
Jigsaw
55 Gallon Barrel – $20 – $25 – Craigslist
Water Heater – $13.82 – Amazon
Water Pump – $14.24 Amazon
Clay Pebbles – $29.26 – Amazon
Misc PVC Items – 3.82 – Lowe’s
Thanks for watching!
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NAILED IT! ►► http://bit.ly/JonNailedIt
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Home & Garden for Mere Mortals web site:
http://homeandgarden.formeremortals.net/
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For Mere Mortals is a trademark of
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The Song I Used:
Life of Riley Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
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40 Comments
Very cool system there. Happy to see more contributors to HGMM! I'll check out your channel and subscribe there too.
Nice project Jon! That was really informative and very interesting. I can see how this would be helpful for someone with limited space and time. Once you get it set up, it's a self sustaining system. Very cool indeed. Nice HGMM debut!
Nice one John, will go check out your channel now.
Nice! What kind of fish?
Good personality and a cool project 😉 Sub'd!
that drain and flood system uses no power pump?
Looks like a potentially cool channel. I will check it out. I have had a blue plastic barrel in that size for over a decade now. I use it to hold plastics to recycle. It is not that hard to carry that into the van when I go drop off recyclables. I guess I am not using it as efficiently as I could be. :p – Heidi
Garden "pests" can often be delicious.
For those who want to know more, just search up aquaponics. It's really cool! I have a setup at home.
Great video.
Just one observation though; bacteria in fish tanks is attached to surfaces. It is not floating in water, so getting water form a friend is useful only in that it contains nitrates/nitrites. Getting used filter media, decorations or gravel is more useful for help with populating a new tank with bacteria.
On the nose ring… some aren't bothered and will continue to watch, others are repulsed and will not watch or subscribe. So, does the nose bling help you win new subscribers? No. Does it cost you potential subscribers? Beyond a doubt. Your call. Good vid, BTW.
A comment about the fish tank water and bacteria. The bacteria does NOT colonize the water. It was growing on those clay pebbles, the fake plants, and aquarium decoration. To properly seed a new setup simply move the pebbles to the new system, if you are building an additional one, remove some media from previous setup and add to the new one. I seed my tanks with media from filters that are already established. I can buy a new tank and set it up instantly, if you are starting this from scratch it could take up to 6 weeks for the bacteria to colonize and start converting the ammonia to nitrate. To learn more research nitrogen cycle.
Isnt it easier to just use arduino or something to program water and use regular dirt? now you gotta mantain the fish instead of the plants
Good job But you did not tell us how you get the water from the fish tank to the garden bed.
How would you handle chloramines in city tap water? I would think you could use an aquarium water conditioner at startup. If you have town water with chlorine only it will break down after a couple of days circulating, but chloramine is much more stable. Make sure to consider this when starting up a new system, refilling the water that evaporates or after cleaning as chlorine and chloramine could kill the fish.
Is that a little clip to hold spoons on your nose? I used to be able to do it without the clip when I was younger. Hint, if you lick the spoon first it will stay on longer.
Not sure why people feel the need to complain about the nose piercing. Its not a big deal. I learned a lot from this video and will probably give it a try. I pretty much have a brown thumb do hopefully I can grow my wife some tomatoes with this idea! Thanks for sharing! Keep the piercing. If thats part if you and your style them embrace it…dont hide it.
Nor Keen on watching snot while someone is talking.
I had a small garden but the squirrels wanted the food more than i did.
easy aquaponics <3
-Hi everybody I'm exited to introduce to you the newest member of the hgmm team …
-yeah yeah "the MICRO JIG"
-… Johnathan Garth!
-whaaaah?!!?o_0
Way to go nice job . After seeing the roots on the corn plant you pulled I would be worried the roots would start to plug up your system . Something you would have to keep an eye on, good job
FFFEEEEEESSSSSSHHHHHHH
Great idea for gardening, but I have to agree with others the nose jewelry is so distracting . Maybe we're just old fuddy-duddy's, but people won't hear you if their looking at you not your great ideas.
You said 'in a little bit of time'.. how long exactly was it to get the plants to sprout to that size? Great project though!
ugh, it's like snot from the nose protrude, and the nut on the cock clocked?
Good info but the nose ring looks like 2 dangling silver snot rockets and is very distracting from the video.
Are PVC pipes food-grade in the USA? I can't imagine it'd be a problem in this setup, but I'm curious.
Very creative and good usage of PVC
I loved the fish tank garden idea! I was excited to check out your channel after you said you have a lot of similar build videos. Was disappointed to see you only have 2 Lol. Maybe someone who sees this video a year later wont get the same disappointment. Good luck with your channel 🙂
what kind of fish are you using and how long do they live for?
Wipe your nose dude. Something funny is sticking out of it.
I've always wanted to try aquaponics! Great video!
And contrary to what everyone else is saying, I like the nose ring. You do you, man.
Cool
you can even use some species of fish that you can grow and eat, later on… with you want to research for this topic, use the key word "aquaponic system", is exactly what this is, a hidroponic system (that grow plants with fertilized water) where the fertilizer comes from the waste of the fish (the "aqua" comes from aquaculture, that is the breeding and harvesting of fish and/or shellfish). Doubts? just ask, i a just graduated in fish engeneering. (yes, we exist) 😀
Interesting, BUT, how does pump from fish tank shut off when plant tank is full? If siphon begins when plant tank is full, how can clay pebbles have time to do their cleaning work before same water is dumped back into fish tank. I think some important info is missing or unexplained.
One comment. You talk about adding water for a week or so before adding the fish to generate the good bacteria. That only works if there is Ammonia in the system for the bacteria to metabolize. So there needs to be an ammonia source present in the system or the weeklong wait is time wasted. There are several ways to do this You could simply add some household ammonia to the water and pump it around for a week. You can also add fish one or two at a time until you have a full bioload. Even adding some dead plant matter will work.
(Trust me here….50 years of keeping aquariums and a graduate degree in an advanced field of biology)
What kind of fish did you use?
When you say "Nailed it" I'm supposing you are not referring to your nose 😀 .. haha … hope you don't mind the joke! I gave a thumbs up to the video since I really like it. Great job!
Give credit to the indians.
They brought it to america