Duck Pond Aquaponic Experiment Update

Kale growing in Duck Pond Water

The duck pond has been filled and hosting 4 ducks for a couple of months. I messed around with several different options for filtering and growing plants before putting some kale plants and a strawberry plant in a 10' length of 4" PVC pipe.

That's working amazingly well. The kale went from seeds in rock wool starters to plants in a week. The plants drop a large root system into the water and grow quickly. They're significantly larger on a daily basis.

The pond went through various transformations since it was filled. It started off as clear, cold well water. Then once the ducks started swimming on it all the time, it bloomed with algae. Bacteria sucked up the nutrients and the algae died off, and finally the plants started  growing and cleaned up all the extraneous nitrates and nitrites from the water so now its actually pretty "clean".

As this season winds down it is more obvious what improvements would be beneficial for next year. It's also pretty obvious that this type of approach is really pretty efficient in terms of resources used.