I have a number of soil beds which I am keen to convert to wicking beds once the current crops are harvested. I also have the opportunity to set up a fish tank right next to a couple of the beds...... so I started thinking (which often leads to yet another weird & wonderful project)
The idea I've been contemplating is to set up a wicking bed such that the water reservoir is actually set up as a continuous flow aquaponics bed filled with gravel, with some sort of wicking medium above it to grow root crops in. That means that the reservoir would have a continuous flow of nutrient rich water running through it and act as a biological filter.
If such a hybrid system were to work as I think it might, it should be superior to either one alone. You could grow root crops aquaponically, you could harvest the fish and provided you have an earthworm population in your growing medium your veggies won't be starved of nutrients, you don't need a sump tank, and your system would be a heck of a lot more tolerant of a power blackout (well, the grow bed would, at least). The one big challenge I can see is lack of access to the biological filtration media for cleaning/unclogging if the need arises.
I envision some sort of solids filtration of the fish tank water before entering the bed, and a permeable barrier between the gravel in the reservoir and the growing medium above it. Both measures are to avoid clogging up the gravel with solids. I think that might be inevitable in the long run and will eventually require disassembly for cleaning.
Has it been done before? would it even work? ...what do you think?
Cheers,
Gab.
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