A friend of mine was kind enough to give me a Raja Puri Banana Plant. Half-seriously, half-jokingly, I decided to try grow it hydroponically. Some goldfish and minnows were also added to the reservoir. The banana plant was potted in a laundry basket with rocks and placed in 70 gallons of water. It soon grew into a giant. As the banana plant grew, the roots ripped the laundry basket apart. This huge plant mass was now resting on a small pile of rocks, and had to be secured to the greenhouse with some wire to help stabilize it. The bigger the banana plant got the more unstable the pH of the water would become. The pH could easily swing from 7 down to 5 throughout the day and needed to be constantly adjusted. This was before I had automated pH control. Due to the large swings in pH, the fish were eventually moved to another water garden. Large swings in pH are probably not healthy for them. The banana plant eventually began to flower and produce bananas. Unfortunately, I decided to pull the plug on this garden before getting ripe bananas. It would be another two months before the bananas would ripen. The constant need for pH adjustments, the high demand for water (10 gal/day for topoff), and repairs needed to the greenhouse after a storm forced my hand. Overall, it was a really fun and interesting garden. Maybe one day I will try again.
Difficulty Level: Intermediate
Reservior: 70 gallons
Nutrient Mix: Use full strength solution with no fish. With the fish, everything was added full strength, except the Calcuim Nitrogen mix. Calcium Booster was also added at 0.9g/gal. Usually, you want to keep nitrates low when keeping fish. One gram per gallon of Calcium + Nirtogen mix was added to the water. This is about 40 ppm nitrate, about the most nitrate you want with fish. When the nitrate levels dropped low, about 10ppm, another gram per gallon was added. API Nitrate Test Kit was used to keep track of nitrate levels.
Fish: goldfish and minnows. Though the fish seemed happy, I don’t recommend keeping them like this. Check out our planted aquarium page for more info.
pH: 6.5 This garden was constantly acidic. Quick Dissolve pH and Alkalinity Up was used to raise pH.
Aerators: Aerator and air stones rated for 120 gallon aquarium. There is a pump/filter, seen in the photo gallery, but it was removed early on in the project.
Beneficial Microbes: Aquascape Beneficial Bacteria added weekly according to directions.