Spaquaponics garden update

My hot tub gardens are doing great.  We've gotten 9 or 10 tasty cucumbers from it, some red long beans, swiss chard, lettuces, spinich, basil, oregano and tomorrow I should get my first tomatoes.

We even have some flowers growing.  Here's the view from our kitchen window.

Aren't these cool beans?  I forget what they're called.

Caspian Pink tomatoes.

Yellow bell peppers.

The white carrots have some growing to do yet but I think they're going to make it to our table.
The cool thing about planting in gravel is you can pull a plant out and transplant it (or take a picture of it) very easily.

It's also a good way to root a plant.  I cut a few sprigs of rosemary from another plant and I stuck them in the wet gravel.  I'm pretty sure they'll take root and grow just fine. 

Remember, this is all growing in gravel only and being fed by the waste from the fish.  Unfortunately the fish haven't fared as well as the plants.  I lost the majority of the catfish and probably only have 10 or so fish in the tub.  The original bass and sunfish are still alive.  I tried to get a picture of them coming up for food but as you can see I was slow on the trigger.

There's lots of algae growing on the uncovered portion of the tub so I made a shade cloth for it.  I also added another filter and we haven't lost a fish in a few weeks now so hopefully things have balanced out. 

I don't know how this will continue to hold up.  The gravel is full of roots and every now and then I have to clean roots out of the bell syphons.  I'm going to call it a successful experiment even though we won't be filling our freezer with fish this year.   I'm going to keep trying.  It's pretty neat having fresh vegetables 10 steps from the back door.