Using ornamental backyard pond for aquaponic growing.

[Cliff Tomlinson]

I am new and I do have many questions. My interest was started by trying to add plants to my 1500 gallon pond to limit algae growth. I have been reading and I just added a small 2ft x 3 ft grow bed and planted 10 lettuce plants and lettuce seed using river rock as my grow media. Also I built another bed 3ft. x 7ft. floating bed and I amm trying some watercress in it free floating.

My question is my pond was started last July with it cycled good and I had no problem with the golfish i started with. They grew to about 4 to 5 inches before winter. I have about 25 fish in this range and probably 20 to 25 rosies (feeder fish. My pond is green with algae and I do not use a uv light in it. Will it be safe to plant more plants since I only started to feed the fish about a month ago. I am still using same bio-filter that I used since last July.

Second question is that number of fish in that much water (1500 gals.) going to allow me to grow very many plants?

Thanks for any thoughts or advice.

[George]

You can add more plants right away.

It doesn't take a lot of fish to make plants grow (especially lettuce) but the algae is also consuming nutrients and so long as sunlight is reaching the water, you will have algae.  

Your growbeds and plants will improve your filtering and will likely reduce the algae.  

[Cliff Tomlinson]

Thanks George.  That was what I was thinking just wasn't sure running that much water if I could circulate it fast enough  with that much volume.  One reason I wanted to do the gardening was tio hopefully balance out and eliminate the algae.  I did it last summer with sweet potato plants and taro with wter lilies helping to provide some shade to the water.