I have a baby butterfly bush which will be planted on the other side of the house in the Fall, so the bees and such won't be in my way. lol. We have two huge pink crepe myrtle that are taller than the house. We have way too many wild sunflowers here. I'm sick of them. lol. Cosmos are definitely on my list! The other plants mentioned I've never heard of except Verbena. When I worked in a greenhouse years ago I remember planting many of their seeds. I'll look them up. Here's a picture of the Crepe Myrtle from last year, they're getting ready to bloom again.

You might want to look into vermicomposting. Worms are really high in protein, so if you got enough worms and had the garbage to keep them happy and breeding you could generate a constant supply for the fish. Plus, the worm castings would make for an excellent supplement to the fishy-water. You might also consider Tilapia. They're a much hardier species of fish than most, and are well-adapted to living in shallow unmoving water (like a big tank). Their dietary requirements are a lot simpler, but I'm not entirely sure what they are. Some commercial aquaponics designs actually grow retail vegetables along with some kind of plant to feed to the Tilapia using the fish tank water as a food source for the plants. Tilapia are fast-growing fish as well, and rather tasty, so you can grow food in both areas - plants and fish. Keep an eye on water quality and when the fish start to over-pollute the tank it's time to pull some out and fry them up.

Yes, naturally I've thought about what the difference between incandescent and metal halide (and/or HPS, florescent) before, even when the lumen output is exactly the same. But from what I've read that's actually about the spectrum of light it produces that makes the difference. So naturally I wouldn't be using incandescent light to grow plants with. With that in mind, wouldn't it be safe to assume that the "par" and "mole" output of a 400 watt MH would be higher than that of a 100 watt MH (assuming it's measured at the same distance). At the same time the lumen output of the 400 watt MH would be higher than the 100 watt MH (respectively). One thing I haven't exactly found an answer for is, why the lumen drop is significantly more the farther away it is for florescent lights verses MH or HPS. What I've concluded is that it most likely has to do with the wattage. Kind of like water coming out of a hose, the higher the pressure, the farther the water will reach. And just by using more florescent lights to increase the overall wattage, that wont increases the wattage (pressure) of each individual bulb (therefore, light intensity of that bulb). I'm particularly interested in LED lighting. And again here is a place that I have not yet found any reliable info from researchers and/or university's on the subject yet. And I recently read a news story about a new high intensity LED lighting, but after over an hour of trying to find anything else about that new "high intensity LED light" I found nothing. I used different keywords, and not even refining the results to .edu sites (but including any sight). All I found was a a link to the manufacture, and even their info is extremely limited. Here are the links Recent advancements in LED technology This supposed to be the manufacture I'm mostly interested on LED because of the reduced electrical costs. I would like to learn enough about them where I can build my own lights. But I have never found an answer to my first question, is there a particular type of LED needed (not referring to color). Or will any blue/red ect. LED work. I know what manufactures will say, they don't want you to build your own, so getting the truth from them would be extremely rare. My guess is that not all blues/reds etc. are the same and that there is a specific spectrum/s of LED color needed to work correctly. Anyhow I have not had time to read that document I printed out yet. It's on my desk in my room right now, but I have something else I need to complete before I can concentrate on it. That will most likely be in about 2-3 days.

It does sound like they are planted too deep. Better to dig them up this fall and replant so that the buds are about 2 inches below the surface in most areas, less in the south.