Fish Tanks Are Hard to Clean. What Would You Do to Get It to Clean Itself.

 When you have a fish tank and you clean it the dirty water usually gets dumped outside. But did you know, it is fertilizing the ground you put it on. The filter the same thing, when you rinse it out all the yucky stuff on it the plants love. And with my pump every time the power goes off i have to refill it. So I wanted to try something else, here is my experiment.

Step 1:

I removed the filter pump and put a little water pump any small one will work.

Step 2:

Then i took an extra container any will work as long as you can put it on a shelf higher then the fish tank, I then cut a whole in the bottle of container an placed a male pvc adapter and a female conduent adapter, i used 3/4 inch because i had it here, you can use any size you have available. put an elbow on it and run it over the tank. in the inside just put a piece of pipe as high as you want the water to go, keep in mind that it has to be about 1 inch under the gravel so don't make it go to the top. I then placed a lager pipe 1 1/2 over it with some cuts in bottom so water would go throw it. Then put a 3inch pipe or what ever you have with cuts in it to let the water go through it too but to hold the gravel out. That is your over flow system, cleaned some gravel and place it in the container. Any gravel will work I like small because it is easy to put my hands in. Place plants in gravel, lay pump hose on gravel and turn pump on.

Step 3:

your new self cleaning system is done and now you can eat what you grow too. I am starting with some lettuce, a okra, and a pepper plant. you can grow anything you want from vegetables to flowers if you want your house to smell nice year round.

Step 4:

What is nice about this system is it is something you can make with anything you have laying around from an old trash can or maybe an old storage contain like I did there is no right or wrong way to do it as long as you enjoy it. You can also make it larger and get 55 gal drums, Ibc tanks, or even small swimming pools. All you need is fish a place to put them and something to put gravel in for the plant's roots to grab a hold of. 

Comments

[BARKing]

I like it. As a kid I had an aquarium with an under sand filter where the bubbles pulled water up a pipe which pulled water down through the aquarium gravel. Same sort of idea but all in one with water plants instead of veggies. I planted live plants in the aquarium. In the 15 years I ran it, I only changed the water twice because I was re arranging my room and could not move the full tank. 4 algae eaters were not enough to keep the glass clean so I did have to scrape the glass every now and then and top up the water. I had different Tetras and Mollies over the years and they had very long lives.

[mnewtonsr]

depending on how big your tank is you might want to get some tilapia in it, they love algae but they will grow nice size. On the other hand you can also invite them for dinner when they get too big if you eat fish.

[john pedersen]

I think this is a Great idea, well done!

[lynnfiorante]

That is just a normal aquaponic system there is nothing special about it

[mnewtonsr]

nope, nothing special, it is something that anyone can put right in their house to grow plants inside, and use what ever they have to make it.

[Dominic Bender]

This is an interresting idea - kinda like reverse aquaponics, not using fish to fees plants but using plants to keep the fishtank clean. Thanks for sharing!