What's up everyone? Welcome back to the epic gardening podcast. That is my radio

voice. It's probably pretty bad. Today we're talking about cycling a tank for

aquaponics.

So hopefully you enjoyed that oyster mushroom series, but we're back with regularly scheduled

programming and we are talking about aquaponics today because I'm getting a bit more interested in it myself and I've had a couple friends that are doing it and it's just top of mind so I figured I would share it today

Now if you're unfamiliar with what Aquaponics is, it is a system in which we create a symbiotic

relationship between fish, bacteria, and plants.

And we use fish waste essentially to grow plants. But it's a bit more complex than that and that's where

cycling comes into effect. So it's not as simple as feeding fish food, those fish poop, the plants use the nutrients within that fish waste

and then the cycle continues. In fact, there are discrete steps that must occur before those plants can use that fish waste. So we feed fish food.

The fish excrete ammonium. There are bacteria that process that ammonium into nitrites.

There are other bacteria that process those nitrites into nitrates.

Then nitrates are used by plant roots to produce vegetative growth for plants.

So how do we actually get this going?

Because if you just put fish and plants in water,

that bacteria is not going to be present.

So you have to do something called cycling.

And this is the process of introducing ammonia to the system to attract the bacteria required

for successful aquaponics. Microbes are vital. The microbes are the bacteria that convert ammonia created by the fish waste into nitrites and then

nitrates. Plants again use those nitrates as it is a form of nitrogen that they can pull into

their root systems to promote growth.

So, there are two ways to cycle a tank, the fish method and the fishless method.

...