Final update, season is over and the harvest is in.. so how did the fish do? I massively overestimated how many and what type of plants I could grow. I could not rely solely on fish waste as a fertilizer since there is no significant source for potassium in the fish food I had to supplement it. I also had to occasionally add trace elements, iron and magnesium being the most critical. My goal was to keep my GH around 200ppm (13dH) and KH around 100ppm (6dH), this meant that I had to add small amounts of Epsom salt, chelated iron and a hydroponic trace element mix every other week (originally every week but after the huge rains stopped I was able to back that off), next year I plan to target 300ppm for GH. The biggest issue I had however was nitrogen, despite adding new fish and feeding significantly more in a day than I once fed in a week I still ended the season battling a nitrogen deficiency. I just could not get any reading for Ammonia / Nitrite / Nitrate on any test kits and I even resorted to adding Potassium Nitrate to battle the deficiency. If I planned to have the same plant load next year I would need faster growing fish like Tilapia, Trout or even Koi. While I may add one or two more fish on the whole however next year I will grow a less demanding mixture of plants and if necessary augment with Potassium Nitrate. Other items of note: - 2 inch net pots are not suitable for anything other than lettuce, strawberries or similar low growing plants. - There was no discernable difference in the growth of the plants started in rockwool, coconut coir or dirt except in the case of the plants started at the nursery which were root-bound when purchased and remained stunted all season. - Tomatoes were not a good candidate to be grown on the rails, they suffered severely through wind damage and many were broken in the heavy rainstorms we had in the spring and early summer. . As for this years harvest, the Tomatoes, as mentioned, had problems and only a few fruit survived to ripen, though those few were tasty. The peppers were another story, I got excellent yields from the Cayenne, Jalapeno, Poblano and Fish peppers I planted. The picture bellow shows one of the Jalapeno plants from the rails next to one grown in dirt, both plants were started at the same time from the same seed packet, the one grown in the dirt was grown in a well fertilized raised bed about 25 feet from the one grown in the rails. I have been growing peppers in soil for years and in our short season I would plant 4 to 6 Cayenne pepper plants to get enough dryable peppers to last out the year. The next picture is one of the 6 plants I grew in my system this year, the one shown was typical and I had already picked from it as many peppers as are on it in the picture, about as much as I would expect from a full crop of plants grown in dirt. In both these photos you can see the signs of the Nitrogen deficiency, the almost white leaves in the new growth. The Fish peppers were the big surprise, I normally grow them for the novelty factor and until this year I had never had all that many and had NEVER had one ripen, this year I have more than I know what to do with and the picture shows them in various states of ripeness, they really are quite attractive. As for the rest of the plants even after eating a huge number I have about 5 pounds of green beans in the freezer, they did quite well and were vary easy to maintain. The lettuce did really well until early August when it all bolted to seed, as did every Lettuce plant I attempted to start after around Aug .1. The strawberries were nice to have but not all that productive. One thing I didn’t really notice until quite recently was the fact that I didn’t loose anything on the rails to vermin. Normally I loose some of my crop to squirrels and some to insects but even though the plants in dirt took the normal amount of damage the plants on the rails had almost none, and the plants in the boxes had very little. You can even see on the picture of the Jalapeno plant from the soil the two peppers being eaten by bugs. Finally to the health of the pond, as mentioned the plants took up all of the Nitrogen I could supply and only after adding Potassium Nitrate would I see any levels on my test kits, the same can be said for phosphorous, at no time could I get a measurable reading. The water remained crystal clear and there was very little algae growth on the sides of the pond. Because there were no floating plants with roots to provide protection none of this years fry have survived (as far as I can tell), but the lack of shade also meant that my one lily plant constantly produced flowers into September, in the past it has been finished by the end of June. The fish remain healthy and while I didn’t get any babies this year I also didn’t loose any adults.

Hi Your main problem will be overgrowth lol. WL will way overgrow such a small volume of water. Easy to thin though. Some better choices would be Cabomba ,Azolla ,duckweed Which will overgrow also but are much more in scale lol. Some emergent plants such as the canna are good to provide some shade. Be sure to keep them in pots. If you have a waterfall it will provide more than enough aeration. gary

I would like to have water lettuce, water hyacinth, lotus tubers or any other pond plants for SASE. The only thing I have to trade is red canna lilies, irises, autumn sedum. I have just moved to a new place and this is all I have. Would be grateful to restart my pond. Thank you, tccm email tccmills@att.net

I have floating plants to trade. What kind of perennials do you have to trade?