I Grew 7 Easy Vegetables in My Aquarium!

So today we are going to be setting up a mini DIY veggie garden in our aquariums. As you can see around me we have tons of plants growing out the tops of our tanks but something about these plants is they're only for aesthetics. So I love growing plants out the tops of my tanks because they suck out tons of nitrates and they really help to keep the aquarium like balanced. Plants out the tops of tanks do a little bit of a better job sucking out nitrates than plants in the tanks so they're really beneficial for that. But a lot of people have been you know talking about aquaponics and hydroponics for the last like 25 years which I haven't been alive for. What I wanted to do was I've seen lots of systems on YouTube and things like that of these aquaponic and hydroponic systems and they're just a little bit too complicated in my opinion for people to just do at home in their tank and I wanted to experiment and see if I could create like a really easy aquaponic hydroponic system for growing veggies out of your tank. So if you come up here you'll be able to see we're not entirely sure if this is going to work yet but we've already set something up very similar to this. So up here we have a little herb garden growing in the top of our four foot tank in our shop. The fish down below have been picking up the roots so we don't know if that's going to be a problem long term but all these plants are really good for like just harvesting herbs and stuff for dinner but they're not you know a fruiting plant or a lettuce or something like that which I do want to try. So down here I went to our big box store and I picked up some different plants. So what we have here is five different types of plants. We've got some leafy greens and then we have some fruiting plants. So we have a tomato, some strawberries, some bok choy, different types of lettuce and some kale. We're going to actually try and grow all of these in some of the tanks in the shop. We're just using floodlights so nothing fancy to grow these with the lighting. I'm not too sure whether this is going to be like an issue but we're going to give it a go. The way we're going to do this is we're actually going to try and use some of this polycarbonate sheeting here to create like a little aquaponic system for these guys to sit on. This is literally just from our big box store. It's the double glaze stuff you can just use like any plastic sheet to create a lid. So we're going drill holes in this, put the plant in with the bare roots hanging down the bottom into the tank and see if we can't grow the plants up the tops. So we're going to grow all of our leafy greens together because these plants don't use as much nutrients as some of our fruiting plants do. So like tomatoes, strawberries, things like that use a ton of nutrients and if we had them in with our leafy greens I feel like the leafy greens just wouldn't last. If we have all of the greens together though they might do a little bit better if we have the fruit trees by themselves or the fruit plants by themselves they might do a little bit better as well. I don't know whether these are going to fruit, we're just going to have to see. This is completely something I've moved to, I haven't even tried this. So what we'll do is we'll start unpacking these. We'll start off with the kale. What I'm doing here is I'm just seeing how big of a hole I'll need to drill in our polycarbonate sheeting. So you can see here the kale's got tons of roots in it which is really good to see. Shake off some of these roots and get the soil off. There's quite a few of these little plants in here. You wash it off in the water. There's like four or five kale plants in here. There's one big mother plant you can see here, this is the huge one. So we could probably do one whole sheet with like 10 kales in it because we've got one, two, three, four, they can probably go together, five, six. So what we're going to do is mark out where we're going to drill our holes. So you can see over here how we're going to put the plants in the tank. So we've got a tank here full of guppies with a little sponge filter in it and there's like a ton of fish in here so this tank definitely needs some live plants. What we've got is our sheet here cut to size. It's going to sit up the back here, it's not going to be able to move around and we're going to have plants all up along the top here. From here we're not going to be able to have plants, just marking that out so we know where we can plant them. One, mark one in the middle here. I'm just like eyeballing it but you can see we've got our little sheet here with the X's on it. So we're going to drill some holes and put the kale in and plant it in the top. So what we're going to do is drill these holes in. I mean there's probably neater ways to do it but I don't really care at this point. Now what we're going to do is get our little kale plants and try and feed them through the lid. Oh my gosh, it's like surgery. So I have one sitting in here like that, another huge one in here too. So there's our next one through, grab the rest of them, there we go. So we have like a bunch of different types and sizes and we'll see which ones grow the best. So you can see here the basic design so it's literally nothing crazy, it's just pretty straightforward. We're going to have all these roots sitting in the water and then hopefully it starts to produce us some kale like out the tops here. So I'll bring this over to our first tank, I'll drop this in up here like that and what we'll do is just make sure all the roots are sitting in the actual water and we'll see if that grows some kale. Okay so me and Ethan were just talking, we're just thinking the problem that we're going to have with the kale is it's going to want to grow up so it's going to reach this light straight away and probably just start to crisp and burn and not do very well. We're going to throw it up the top here, at least it'll get the ambient light and still maybe grow up. We're not too sure but like we're just going to try. What we'll do is you can see we've already got plants like a spider grass here growing out the tops. These are obviously going to have to come out because they're just going to soak up all our nutrients that we're That's crazy, that's like a literally a few weeks growth. We'll put the kale up there. At least you know they're easier to move around. Perfect. So now we've got our kale up there, that's probably going to do a lot better. We'll see though because a lot of these plants like to be in full sun. I don't know whether this ambient light is going to be enough to actually produce crop. They'll probably survive but I guess we'll just see over the next coming weeks whether this even works. So we'll do the next one. We'll do our lettuce down here maybe. Look how cute they are. Hopefully they can even reach the bottom. I reckon these are probably going to grow the best in all honesty. I just feel like they're going to bush up real nicely and I just think that that's going to grow really quick as well. There we go. Get that one in there. Looks so funny. All right there's our little lettuce tray. So restaurants can hit me up after these are ready. Oh I'm barely in there because yeah they just need to grow in a little bit. I can just break off a few pieces of styro and just let them float for a bit. Okay so the problem that we have here is our lettuce is not big enough yet where the I'm just going to put some little rafts here to keep it in place and hopefully it stays there for now. Everyone's going to be like what the heck is that when they come in the shop. What will happen is these roots will just grow in over the next few days I'm hoping and then once they've grown down we can like lift it back up once the plants are a little bit more mature. I think it's important that it has the oxygen in the water. I've found that like a lot of the plants when I grow them out of the tops of the tanks if there's no bubbling in the tank it doesn't grow like it starts rotting so it is important that it has that but that should work. You can see that little light there it's going to give them enough light hopefully to entice them to grow up. It's important too that we rip off any broken leaves so the plant doesn't waste time trying to grow those. So because I'm too lazy to make another one of those polycarbonate sheets we're literally just going to plant these like we do with all the other plants in the top of a tank and see if they grow. So here we've got some strawberries hopefully this one grows because I love strawberries. I'll get this one out that's like actually so muddy so that's really promising it means it might not mind having wet feet get all the dirt and stuff off it. I'm happy with that I don't mind having all this extra dirt and stuff in there I don't think it affects the fish I mean you should see where they come from in the wild. There's our little strawberry plant so it's got tons of roots and I reckon this will do really well. Over here we've got a little tank set up for it you can see in this tank we have no plants or anything in it so there's just a ton of fish and a filter and then we've got our little light up here so what I'm hoping happens is the strawberry grows up and over here like a little canopy so what we're going to do is literally just plant it in the corner here like we do with all of our other plants. The easiest way to grow fruit if that does work is just chuck it in a fish tank but there's our strawberries and I think throw a tomato or something up in one of these top tanks even if we put the tomato here and we can see maybe it'll grow up towards that one I don't know we'll see we'll go and get that tomato out here we have a tomato plant this is just a tommy toe it doesn't make a difference so we'll take our tomato out this one's got a huge root system as well so these do suck up a ton of nutrients there's even a little spider in there so it's important that you don't have like other plants in your tank when you're using these things use up all the juice in your tank to grow there you go it's pretty decent root system there so we'll go over and plant this one as well we'll throw him up in the corner here next to the sprayer he can just literally just sit there and I mean hopefully he starts to grow as well so finally we've got these bok choys which I over definitely overbought plants today but these look really good these are a common aquaponic plant my girlfriend loves bok choys so she'll be happy if I can grow some of this so I'll take this one out as well we get a few bok choys we'll go find little spots to put these the thing about that tank it's not going to have enough waste because it's only shrimp but this one's a good one this has got a bunch of angels so we'll throw the anubias away so I'll put a bok choy up in this corner that should work and then this mini molly tank so these mini mollies are going to produce waste like poop and then what will hopefully happen is the waste will get broken down by the filters in these tanks so same with these angelfish that sponge filter is going to have a ton of like nitrifying bacteria which will break down that waste and turn it into nitrites and then nitrates and these plants love the nitrates and they're going to use that to grow this one up here sweet I guess that's going to be it so I'll keep you guys updated with the growth of all these plants if they even grow which ones grow and which ones don't hopefully we get to eat some of these I'm not too sure how long it's going to take before they start really growing but yeah okay so it's now been a week since we planted our vegetables in the aquariums and already we have a few things to report back so the lettuce in this tank down here you can see is doing fantastic it's definitely grown none of it's died off and the roots have settled in really well the roots aren't big enough yet where we can lift the platform back up and actually use it as a lid but definitely this lettuce in the middle here with the most light has been growing like crazy the other lettuces are kind of growing in towards the light which is kind of cool but this one lettuce in the middle has just like exploded like it's gone crazy and then the other ones are doing okay I mean they're growing really well like better than I thought they would and they've definitely grown quite a bit since we put them in and it's only been a week so that's really cool to see our strawberry is doing okay I'm not too sure whether it's just like getting used to being in water it hasn't put out any new growth yet there might be one or two leaves trying to come through but the leaves that were on it originally kind of look a little bit like sad I don't know how else to describe it but it's surviving it's got a really good root system underneath and seems to be doing okay our bok choy is doing fantastic as well that's definitely put out a few little new pieces of growth and grown a tiny bit for us I think that's going to go really well as we move on with this project I think that plant's going to do really well in here it's not growing like crazy but the roots have settled in and that looks really nice the tomatoes are doing good too and they've settled in there's like a tiny bit of new growth but I think what's going to happen is over time it's just going to explode and it's just settling in right now and gearing up for that massive explosion the kale is also doing really well I'd say equally as good as this lettuce it doesn't look as big but it's definitely growing a little bit and I'm keen to see how the kale does the root system seems to be doing all right so yeah I have had a few issues with fish kind of nipping at the roots a little bit but it hasn't been as bad as some of my other projects like my herb garden that just those roots were getting smashed straight away these ones seem to be doing a little bit better it must just be that the fish don't really want to eat them but that's our one week update I'm keen to see how these go over the next coming weeks and how they grow okay so it's been two weeks since we set up our vegetable gardens and we've got a lot of growth happening so if you come to the lettuce you'll see I'll take this a little way you can have a good look you'll see that all the lettuce is like growing terrific so it's getting wet actually but these lettuce in the middle are doing the best because they're getting the most light and they've grown at least double in size all the other lettuce is growing really really well as well honestly it's about a salad's worth not even like when we eat it like it's not a lot but it is definitely filtering the aquarium the fish have liked having the plants in here and I think they have been eating some of the roots so like having some protection would be good you probably get more growth but they're all growing so that's a positive for me and it works so our lettuce is doing fantastic put this lid back if you come next door to the strawberry it's not dead but it's it's kind of you know wilting away a tiny bit there is new growth here I don't know if you can see that in there so where my finger is there is some new buds coming through so I mean that's always promising I don't think we're going to get a strawberry for a very long time but the plant's still surviving and just you know adjusting to its new environment I think it might pull through we'll see if we come on up to our kale the kale is also growing for sure you can see it's all kind of getting bigger but we're gonna have an issue here because the kale can only go so high before it hits the light I think having this light on it's gonna like you can see here this one's crisping up so that's not the best but it is growing like it's sending out new leaves and all that and all the other kales are growing too but there's obviously going to be a limit on how big they can get in the shop like because there's no way for it to grow up but it's still doing okay I mean it would have maybe doubled in size I'm not too sure I don't remember how small they were so the tomato bush is doing okay too it's actually grown a little bit so you can see all this new growth here again how long until we get a tomato I don't know I think we might never get a tomato we'll see though it's only been two weeks it's still alive I think it's trying to get underneath the lighting the thing about all these plants is in the right environment so like with a light that was a bit higher up so the plant could just grow up I feel like they'd do fantastic I think these aquariums and this shop setup is more suited for like climbing plants so like pothos and all that stuff these things just aren't going to want to grow here so they're just kind of surviving and growing and trying to get themselves into a good environment that they can't really reach the bok choy is actually growing quite a bit they're all a lot bigger and you can see these are maybe doing the best because they're more of a stubby plant so they just hang in the tops of these tanks and you can see they've all got new leaves and growth coming out so there's another one here you can see this is our smallest one it's still doing really well and this is our big boy and this one's gotten quite large now so the bok choy is doing okay there might be some kind of issue with that leaf not too sure yeah all the plants are doing okay we haven't like lost any but obviously this environment isn't the best for them but I think the concept kind of works if you could set it up with like a higher light so we'll keep updating you over the next couple weeks and see how they go okay so it's now been a month since we set up this project and I'm back to report final results so we're here with the lettuce and the lettuce has done really really well over the last month I think this concept would work much much better in a different setup but it's good to see that at least our lettuce is growing so the fish have kind of laid off the roots a little bit and actually let those roots settle in so they've kind of realized it's not actual food or they don't like the taste of it or whatever but all of our lettuce survived some of it melted back as I moved it from the bottom level up to the top and it had to do some growing and adjusting but the main issue I have is the vertical reach for the plant so the problem is because my lights are down so low the plant can only get so high and then it hits the light and just starts to melt back a little bit so all the lettuce has grown all of it would be consumable it would do better in a different setup but this is just to prove to you guys that this model would work like you can just set up lettuce like this so the lettuce has done well up above we also have the kale the kale's done well too I haven't lost any of the kale like it's all survived but again the same issue where it's grown up and hit the actual light and just stopped growing and started to melt back a little bit when it hits that light so if this was allowed to grow really really tall and had a light from above it would do much better but as for other plants I've got my little strawberry down here and this guy has not done well I don't know if it's because he's in water I think that it's actually due to a parasite so this guy's absolutely covered in spider mites I didn't see this till the other day and I'm probably just going to end up chucking him out because I can't be bothered to get rid of the spider mites at this point they've kind of taken over the plant and I don't want the spider mite spreading throughout all the other plants in the room I mean you can just spray spider mites with alcohol I think and it kills them but the plant's still alive I mean I give it a spray but for the most part it didn't really grow that much and it didn't do as well as I thought it would so it had a good couple of weeks there and then it just sort of started to perish a little bit not do that well down here we've got the tomato plant and this guy's done so well since we added him so he's at least triple in size he's starting to wilt a little bit and I'm not too sure what this is the thing with these plants is they get moved around a bit because they're in the shop what happens is because they're just suspended behind the lids they get knocked around a little bit and I feel like they just don't really learn how to be strong so they survive but because there's no wind or outside pressure on these plants they just kind of wilt down a little bit and they don't really form any strength so the tomato is definitely growing it's still continuing to grow there's no fruit on it but the tomato survived and it's done all right and finally down the bottom here we've got the bok choys and the bok choys have done really well too I lost one of them and it was because when we were adjusting the lid it just lost its roots out of the water and just completely died back but the other ones grew really well there's a weird growth on one of them's leaves and I think for the most part they all seem to look really good like they've definitely grown they probably need another month before they look really big and I'm gonna leave them in here but bok choy grows really well in water apparently so in my opinion there's obviously thousands of different vegetables you can try I'd give the tomatoes a try I'd definitely give bok choy kale and lettuce a try I mean strawberries might work you can always give it a go but I didn't really have that much success with it so anyways thank you for watching this video I hope you guys enjoyed it and see you guys in the next one