Aquaponics jar - no tech

We have all seen pictures of plants growing in water beads.  They look great.  We had some water beads that I was going to throw out, so decided to use them for something.

The kids caught some gambusia fish in a local river.  Gambusia are a pest here and cannot legally be returned to the river, so we fed most to the chickens and used a couple in an aquaponics jar experiment with water beads.  I also have some variegated spider plants, they are hardy, survive pretty much anything, and I am sure I have seen them in tiny aquaponics so they should be well suited to this task.

We cut the top off a plastic bottle, and punched a hole in the lid for water exchange.  Filled this with water beads, popped in a spider plant, and expected it to work.  

It looked great at the start.

waterbeads jar aquaponics attempt

It didn't work.  

There was not enough gas exchange with the water and the fish suffered.  I felt really bad for them.  We then put something between the bottle and the jar to leave a little gap for gas exchange.  This was better for a little while, but the fish died several weeks later.  

I still feel really bad about this.  Conditions were not good for the fish, and I think the water beads may have played a part in their death.  The beads themselves are meant to be inert and non-toxic, but maybe the colour used in them is dangerous?

Notice the water beads are all plump and completely fill the container

Everything looked great at the start

I still thought this idea had merit, so we kept it going without any fish.  I figured we could learn from this and it doesn't need fish for proof of concept.  I certainly didn't want any more fish to go through anything like this.

We did learn a lot, it failed again.

The plant flopped over.  It was not properly supported by the beads.  All those amazing pictures you see of plants growing in beautiful water beads probably haven't been growing in it for very long. 

The beads at the top started to lose water and dehydrate.  I am not sure how this is possible, but it is.  Look at the pictures, all the beads at the top are now tiny and dry!  The beads were right up to the top of the container at the start of this, now the level has dropped a lot.

Somehow the plant seems to be shriveling up, maybe due to lack of water.  I'm not sure how this can be possible as the beads in the lower section are below the water level and are constantly submerged in water.  These spider plants are pretty tough, so I expected them to easily thrive in this.

I have tried pouring water over the top of the beads to re-hydrate them...but that only seems to slow the problem rather than fix it.  The top water beads keep drying and shrinking.

Look how much lower the water beads are now, they are drying

Some beads under water, the lid is perforated to let in water, yet the top beads are still drying

The plant is not supported by beads, and is shriveling, as are the water beads

After a while the water beads started to grow algae.  The beads at the top are drying even though the beads lower down are under the water.  The lid of the bottle has holes punched in it to allow the water in.  The plants are certainly not thriving, they flop over as they are not supported by the beads, and they appear to be somewhat stressed by lack of water.  I planted some other spider plants in a small pot of soil, the soil grown plants are probably three times larger.

I'm going to let this run to the bitter end.  There are no fish in there suffering, so there is no real reason to stop.  At this stage is is pretty clear that water beads are no good for growing plants, and water beads should not be used in tiny jar aquaponics.

The beads on top are still shrinking while the ones lower down are submerged

The water beads are starting to get algae growing on them

The water beads are still shrinking, this was full of plump beads at the start

I'm sure I have heard of jar aquaponics working, and I am sure I have heard it working without a pump or any other technology.  After seeing this I don't believe jar aquaponics can work with water beads, but it may work with gravel.  

Overall this experiment has failed.  No part of it has gone well.  While I feel bad for the fish, I have learned from it.  Once this fails completely I should try again using gravel instead of water beads (but no fish).