It’s now been over a week since I overhauled the quackuaponics to be a flow-through system rather than a self-contained, circulating system. So far… *mwah* (kisses fingers) it has been amazing. The pond is staying MUCH cleaner, and I haven’t. had. to. do. a. damn. thing. Laziness FTW!

This morning, though, I noticed that the grow bed outflow was just dribbling out a steady, small stream of water. What this usually means is that water is not flowing into the grow bed fast enough to trigger the bell siphon–so the grow bed is staying full, and all the plant roots are 100% submerged. Not good. I got a chance to check it out around lunchtime, and indeed, the inflow (from the natural pond/siphon setup) seemed to have slowed down significantly. I figured that perhaps some “pond gunk” (technical term) had gotten into the hose and slowed down the flow. Easy solution: I just hooked the siphon hose up to a hose that was attached to a spigot, and blew a bunch of water through to dislodge whatever was gumming up the works.

There may well have been some “pond gunk” in there too, but when I checked on the siphon outflow (which flows into the grow bed past this little barley straw bundle), I also found a surprise suspect.

A grumpy little crayfish had apparently taken the ride of his/her life, zipping through the hose and out into the grow bed.

I am small but fierce! Beware my wrath!

The little bugger was just fine after that adventure, so I tossed it back into the natural pond–well away from where the siphon hose sits!