I love aquaponics. Its a closed loop, relatively maintenance free way to enjoy fish and plants.

The way these systems work is, the fish create waste → Waste gets diluted in the water as Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate (Great plant fertaliser!) → This water is then pumped up to plants → This nutrition for the plants, feeds them, so they do not need soil to grow → This removes the chemicals from the water, and it returns to the fish area, nice and clean… this cycle then repeats indefinitely. This means you just top up any evaporation, but there's no filter to clean, and no water to change.

After trying to print my own bowls, I found it used ALOT of filament, and made the whole exercise very difficult. Then I spotted a perfect bowl at my local hardware store and I adapted my design to it.

I love the sound of the water trickling down and my 2 year old loves “helping” me feed the fish each day.

All the parts required are listed below, and are relatively inexpensive.

Print settings:

Recommend printing in PETG as it will handle the environment better than PLA. Warning, This print will use about 800g of filament.

Gyroid Infill 15%.

2 Walls

You don't need to go crazy with trying to print this thing watertight, you just wont achieve it reliably. You'll be painting Epoxy Resin on the inside anyway, so you don't need heaps of walls or infill.

Extras you'll require for this project:

• 41cm Low bowl Plant Pot - In Australia, I bought this one from Bunnings. The grow bed is designed for this exact pot, however you may find it fits with similar size pots, but no guarantee. If you are wanting to try a different pot, id recommend just printing just the first 1cm of the bed, see if the curve fits.
• Silicon. I just used roof and gutter silicon to seal the drain hole in the pot.
• Grow light - I bought this one from Amazon. Just plugs into USB and has built in timers, etc. The hole in the bed is designed specifically for this light.
• Water Pump - I got this off Amazon. USB powered also, but has power control built in which I run at the lowest setting.
• Epoxy Resin - I bought this from bunnings, but any resin should be fine. Grab a few cheap paintbrushes while you're there.
• Water hose - I had some lying around so cant give you a link, but whatever fits on the pump should do the trick. you only need about a foot.
• Grow media - While you can just use rocks to fill the bed, the best thing to use is Clay Balls. These can be found cheap (I had some spare lying around) as you only need a small amount.
• cyanoacrylate Super glue. This is just super glue. simply to glue to 2 pieces of the bed together after printing.
• Sand paper - to sand before epoxy painting. anything from 120 to 400 grit will be fine.

You'll need to print the bed in 2 pieces. I don't recommend splitting in half as the light stand wont be perfect, so just offset the cut slightly. Also I recommend using manual painted supports for the spout opening, otherwise it will deform. I also use dowels to help keep the print together while gluing.

Assembly:

Firstly seal your bowl. Mine had a rubber bung for the drain hole, so i just covered it in silicon to prevent any leaking.

After printing insert the dowels, and glue the pieces together. You can either clamp them, or if you're like me and don't have clamps large enough, just put the bed on its end and put a heavy weight on top to press it together.

After the glue dries, I recommend scuffing the inside with sandpaper to help the epoxy stick.

Mix the epoxy according to the instructions, and paint it onto the inside of the print. don't paint inside the light holder, but be sure to get inside the waterfall section. Also if your pump hose is a tight fit, paint the epoxy with the hose already in place (Read below for instructions on how far to insert hose).

Id recommend at least 2 or 3 coats. My epoxy required at least 12 hours between coats.

Now you're basically done. Just attach the hose to your pump and then feed it into the grow bed. The hose should come to the same height as the top of the waterfall divider, otherwise upon power failure it will drain all the grow-bed water back to the bowl and possibly overflow it. I also siliconed my hose in place for a nice fit.

Then fill your grow bed with clay balls (I filled mine up to the waterfall divider with clay balls, then planted the plants, then topped with a layer of gloss black rocks (Check any stones added are aquarium safe.. many are not).

I also put a couple of large rocks in the waterfall section to stop any of the smaller rocks falling down, but allowing water through.

There you go. Just keep in mind this bowl holds 15L of water, so don't over populate with fish. I have 4 small goldfish in mine, but when they are larger, I'll move them to my large pond.

Also note that filtration is provided by the growth of the plants. No plants = no removal of the Nitrates. If you have plants, you never need to do water changes, but if you don't have plants, you need to change roughly 20% of the water each week, but then again, the whole point of this is to have plants.

If anyone prints this, please upload a pic! I'd love to see everyone's!