So much to learn.

I discovered a major flaw in my system today after work. It turns out that fish poop adds up faster than I thought it could. My system is pretty simple, or it was until I just changed it. I had a float that controls a pump that pumps water from the fish tank to the grow bed. The pump only runs for about 5 minutes every 45 minutes or so. I do have a filter in the bed itself to remove solid waste from the tank.

It turns out that I need to pump more water through that filter than 5 minutes per hour or so. There was a ton of fish poop floating around in the water. I haven't noticed it building up because I've been getting home as the sun goes down. Since I got of earlier today, I was able to see the fish tank in full sunlight. What a mess it was.

To fix the problem, I installed another pump in the tank. This new sump pump is now the pump that moves the water to the grow bed. The float that was attached to the other pump is now controlling the new pump. The old pump is now running non stop. I have it piped to pump onto a filter pad and then back into the fish tank. This will work for a couple of days while I figure a permanent fix. I'm glad I got off early, I'm not sure how much more poop those poor fish could stand to swim through.

I've also decided to follow the advice of Monday's Child, a reader of this blog, and wait a while before I add more fish. Everything I read says let the cycling process have some time to develop. I almost didn't have enough patience for this to happen. Thanks Monday's Child.