Cleaning and Winterizing Aquaponics
Cleaning and Winterizing Aquaponics can be difficult if you are trying to maintain fish over the winter without the use of plants and growbeds to denitrify fish water in your aquaponics system. Since the cost is prohibitive to grow plants in the winter by heating the ambient air temperature in our greenhouse on the sub zero nights of our Colorado winters, we had to come up with an in-tank filtration way to maintain balance in our aquariums.
The solution was to install four large aquarium sponge filters in each of our three aquaponic fish tanks. These provide both the mechanical filtration needed and the necessary air to surface area needed in the tank to cultivate beneficial bacteria that helps to maintain water clarity in our fish aquariums with or without plants.
In the winter, when we cannot grow plants due to the cost of heating our small greenhouse during the negative zero nights of Colorado winters, we utilize an in-tank filtration method of maintaining fish in our aquaponics system with our without plants. Since this system is so effective, we have adopted these filters for use all year around, maintaining them by cleaning every 4 to 6 months, although 1-2 months is preferred in warmer climates that have a lot higher growth if algae in their fish tanks.
Winterizing and cleaning aquaponics involves a process of cleaning aquarium sponge filters and pumps, removing excess algae and fish debris from rocks, plants, much of the surface area in the fish tanks and removing all of the water in the tanks while carefully storing the fish in a temporary bucket or bin. Then, once the tanks are clean, we replace that water with 100% new water and conditioning the water again with prime and beneficial bacteria (as needed).
Note that if you allow a portion of the algae buildup on the sides of the tanks to remain during the cleaning process, it helps to hedge against bacterial imbalance that can occur from over-cleaning your aquariums. Another important factor to keep in mind during this process is the water temperature between your well or city water coming into the tanks and the temperature of the water within your temporary bucket. Generally, it is advised to keep the water temperature in the bucket between 3 to 5 degrees of the in-coming water being placed into the cleaned fish tanks. This greatly decreases the changes of fish shock during the process.
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To Learn more about aquaponics, download a copy of our Quick Start Guide to Aquaponics PDF below and check out our Greenhouse Aquaponics Video Course Lifetime Membership Plan at the links below:
