The Curious Case of Floating Hydrotons

Well, as I've reported in my previous post, the only hydrotons that I can find were the floating ones.

Still I was curious if it can still work in a aquaponic growbed if that material is mixed with heavier materials.

If it works, then the fact that a certain percentage of the GB media can be replaced with a lighter hydroton would have been better than the BG being completely filled with much heavier gravels or stones.

So, I bought gravel of three different sizes, they were at least 4-5kg for each bag. And I bought some of those hydrotons as well.

My theory was to place the hydrotons at the bottom and weigh them down with much heavier stone. Would that counter the buoyancy of the hydrotons? I'm a diver, so I am intimately familiar with the forces of buoyancy.

The first layer was hydrotons:

Then I added water:

Next I place large flat gravels to try and layer them on top of the hydrotons:

And I added more gravels of smaller sizes:

As you can see, I have almost covered the entire layer. Then I added water:

From the side view,  note that IT IS POSSIBLE, provided you choose the right kind of gravel. So once the GB is completely filled, you will have maybe 30% hydrotons and 70% gravel.

Still, once you fill the GB with more water, some hydrotons will still floats up. That won't be a problem if you continue to fill the GB with more gravel. I didn't do that for this experiment because I was running out of gravels.

In total, it was a ratio of 3 bags of gravels and 2 bags of hydrotons.

If you were to increase the ratio from 3:2 to 2:1, I'm confident that it will work.

Then it is up to you to experiment to get the right ratios depending on what kind of gravels you can find locally where you live.

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting test and there were lessons learnt.

Happy Farming.