Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Glad to hear you're still going strong TC!

Are your systems maintaining or have you parked some to keep up?

Regards, Martin.

Fish and media beds are still maintaining well but I've let the plants go to an extent over summer.

Thanks TC. Good luck with juggling all the tasks, it can seem a bit hectic in the beginning but it eventually settles down.

Regards, Martin.

First off, congrats on the new baby! He looks super healthy!

I started out reading all 82 plus pages, but figured it was going to take me a month to get through all the posts. I had a few questions I wanted to ask you that perhaps when you get a few free moments, you can answer. Perhaps even other members here might chime in with what they have.

I notice that you use an indexer for your towers. Is this because of lack of pressure at the end or do you find it easier to control the pressure to the zones that way?

You also have soda bottles inverted over the tops. Why and what is going on below that?

Why did you decide to raise fish separate from the aquaponics? Is there a good, profitable commercial market for them in your area?

Do you have somewhere a breakdown of your system with tips and tricks that I can read? Something like what works well for you like the distance between braces on the towers, thickness of the pvc, etc? What do you glue vs pressure fit? Where do you have/wish you had valves? Your layout, etc? I know, that's a LOT to ask, but I kind of thought that with all the questions you have been asked, you probably have something somewhere by now. Even just lots of photos that I can study are quite helpful.

I've been reading and studying this for some time now and have digested and absorbed tons of great info on it. We are out in the desert with summer temps of dry 117 not being uncommon, so I have different issues then you do in FL, not the least of which is keeping the fish and a hoop house cool enough in the summer. Physical limitations won't let me put the fish tanks in the ground at ground level, but I can still berm most of the way around the waist high tanks for the thermal mass factor, leaving a small walkway to access each tank.

One way or another, we will be on a few acres in the next 6 months or so, and I want to set up a small commercial system to help support us since we are of retirement age. Taking the time to learn all I can now is where I am at. I am also thinking of adding some chicks, ducks and rabbits for meat purposes and sale. My thoughts are that a well planned layout will let me put as much food production as possible on the small acreage. I still need to see how the stacked tower systems permit sufficient light to the inside and lower plants. I'm thinking perhaps if they are staggered in each row to keep them from being packed back to back. Something like below image. If you even left more horizontal space in each row, you could put more of a stagger to it.

I'm also thinking that I could put those plants that don't do well in the afternoon sun on the eastern side of the towers and those that prefer it on the western sides, then let the western side plants help shade the morning sun plants. Full sun in the desert heat is different than full sun in cooler places. Thoughts? Suggestions? I like towers, as they seem to permit a LOT more production per square foot.

Thanks so much for your time and help, and again, congrats on your new baby!

Actually I'm not indexing for the towers but I have a diversion valve that was alternating between two banks. It seemed to help with pressure and clogging issues but of course that will all depend on the size pump and the filtration before water goes to the towers as to how much an issue that is.

Basically I put the hole in the side of the PVC cap and it sprays against the bottle to spread and trickle down into the top of the tower. This helps with slime build up causing splashing of water out of the tower and helps a little against clogging since a hole aimed straight down will clog more quickly, I also do a slit instead of a hole now since snail shells block a round hole much more effectively.

All my fish are in aquaponics systems. What do you mean raise them separate? I have them in a fish tank separate from the plant beds but the water recirculates through the whole system. (you don't want to put large fish in your plant beds really and that wouldn't work in towers or media beds anyway.)
As to commercial market, the small quantities of fish from an aquaponic system are really going to be difficult to market commercially since most processing is either done on a very large scale or very small scale. Large scale you need to provide TONS of fish at a time and on a small scale it is hard to make it profitable to have the fish processed. Fish are not a money maker for me, they provide nutrients and food for us and our farm for the most part. I sell small quantity of fingerlings to people who just need a small number for a home system (since it is hard to buy less then 100 from a large fish farm.) Or to friends and neighbors who are willing to clean their own fish. I need to look into asian markets that might want live fish though. Few people want whole fish that they need to clean/gut themselves though in my neighborhood there was a bit of a market for bluegill that way. I did have bluegill in a tank that was recirculating with a pond plant bed as an aquatic plant aquaponics system that was really easy.



Sorry I don't have such a thing put together. I did at one point try to get support to wright a reference for aquaponics but that didn't happen. Closest thing I have is the slide shows from my Aquaponic Plumbing class on my web site I guess.


Instead of having plastic on the hoop house, put aluminet shade cloth over it for the summer and perhaps dig some ponds around it so as the air moves over the ponds into your system it will be a bit cooler. Or put a ridge vent along the whole top of the greenhouse and then open up the ground level on the cooler side so that the cooler air gets sucked in at the bottom and hot air pulled out at the top to help with cooling. I'm not much of a supporter of greenhouses in sub tropical climates unless you are going high tech with HVAC systems but that is hard to do in a hoop house.
At least in a dry climate you can do evaporative cooling if you have access to a plentiful enough supply of water.


I have some rather negative views of "small commercial systems so you can Retire" Seems like lots of people are selling this idea that you can put in a dinky little commercial system and then have an income off only a few hours of work per day. Simply building the system and even managing to grow beautiful veggies in it won't provide any income, in fact it will cost you money to do this. To get an income from Aquaponics you actually have to put quite a lot of effort into marketing/selling that produce and there is quite a bit of added cost, logistics and other stuff that makes commercial farming far trickier than simply having more veggies than your family will eat. Yea perhaps daily system maintenance of a small commercial system won't take much of your time but when it comes to planting, harvesting, packaging, cleaning up, re-planting, marketing, storing (referigerating), transporting, insurance, advertising, etc, it is more than a full time job for most especially for the first few years of start up which usually requires LOTS of capital since you are not making much money in the early days. So unless you have a guaranteed market for something you KNOW you can grow flawlessly all the time, I would think twice before depending on a small commercial aquaponics system to support anything. I'm not saying Don't do it, but I want to show you a very big reality pill that most people seem to have a hard time swallowing.

As to the towers. They are very good for controlled environment agriculture where the greenhouse space has enough heating/cooling to keep the air temperature from swinging too wide. If you can't control the environment of the greenhouse that well, the towers (like NFT) will have a huge impact on your system water temperature and you will need to limit the amount of towers in relation to the water volume or wind up having to spend lots of extra on water heating/cooling. Remember the towers were developed in a climate/latitude/altitude that greenhouse is the ONLY way for year round production, the sun is intense but at an angle so they are going to be doing greenhouse heating anyway, they have intense sun but the angel of it makes growing in a raft bed rather space inefficient because the front row of the raft, the plants are going to shade several rows of plants behind. So in that location the towers make MUCH more sense for greenhouse production.

In a non greenhouse dependent climate the towers become a bit less valued since a raft bed doesn't have the same disadvantage with sun angles at lower latitudes and the increased water volume is of benefit in the climate where air temps swing very wide between day/night.

That is not to say towers don't have some good niches where they would be useful but don't get too wrapped up in growing vertical unless your only crop is going to be very small plants. Remember that if you plan to grow any large/tall or vining plants that counts as vertical growing too but you don't have to pay to pump the water up high for them since nature takes care of it when you are simply having the plant grow UP.




Easier said than done, almost all plants would prefer more morning sun. There may be some you can grow that will do OK with lots of afternoon sun but they are mainly going to be your HOT weather or tropical plants so they probably won't help you much in the winter.

Again towers may seem to permit more production per square foot but they seem to do it best when utilized in the way bright agrotech uses theirs (they don't need to be staggered but you do wind up needing to shift the towers weekly so that the larger plants are in back and the new plantings are in front.)

By the way, I'm not much of a supporter of raft aquaponics either. I prefer media beds the most. I just grow quick turn around crops that I need to do a lot of weekly harvest/re-planting in the rafts. Towers I like to plant some continual harvest stuff that is easy to pick directly from the towers but I don't have as many towers on my system anymore as they gave me temperature issues. I've added lots of media beds and like them best for most of the crops other than perhaps lettuce and of course the aquatic plants (watercress, water chestnuts.)

Great response TC, very informative! Thanks


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Great response TC, very informative! Thanks


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Thanks TC, you always take such care in your answers and we all appreciate it.

Hope the bambino is thriving.

Yep, already pulling himself up to standing so I gotta drop the crib mattress down so he doesn't start climbing or flipping out of the crib. At least he isn't falling over and hitting his head on the rails every 4 minutes now like he was yesterday. They grow sooo fast

Yeah, the first 12 months are amazing to watch. They change very quickly.

Thanks for all the super and thorough answers! I thought I read somewhere in the first 20 or so pages here that you had decided to raise the fish separately. I could have been mistaken.



I'm not a big fan of open still water ponds. I don't want mosquitoes. If I put fish in them, then I have more fish to feed that are going to need caring for with filters, air stones, etc. I'd rather spend the time and money with evaporative cooling on one wall and a fan or two on the other. In our heat, there really is no cooler side, it's all hot unless it is under shade, and the desert is not known for shade. Around here where we are at right now, I think every bird within 10 miles has figured out that I have fruit trees. They are here in droves and can clear my large, mature apricot tree in 2 days. That's my main reason for a greenhouse. If I do this out in the open, every bird around will destroy everything.

I agree that shade cloth is the way to go. I was thinking of trying to find a white cloth rather than the black you see here, for obvious reasons. I see they have a silver reflective one, too. I have several nurseries here that I can ask them what percentage they are using in different areas to get a good, real life example of how well it works vs how well the plants are doing under it.



I hear you there. Those are EXTREMELY valid and true points. I would not even consider it in most areas for many of those reasons. Being here in Vegas, we have an over abundance of world class chefs with fancy white tablecloth restaurants all clamoring to be served the best they can get. My plan would not be to necessarily grow what I would like to grow, but what the chef's would like to have provided to them. Part of that means starting out small and growing as the demand grows. I'd rather turn down a small percentage of orders then to have to deal with storage, refrigeration, etc, by producing more than is already pre-sold. Actually, initially after the system is on line, there will still be a lot of testing to see what grows best where, with what percent shade cloth, based upon lots of variables. All those steps have to be walked before it can become income producing.




Thank you so much. I did not know that about towers and what they were mostly designed for use. My thinking was to maximize floor space usage to minimize the size of the greenhouse.

I would think that more DWC and media beds would be wiser simply because of the quantity of water in each bed acting as a thermal mass. The lesser the amount of water, as in NFTs, the more rise in temperature as the water flows thru the system.


Again, Thank you so much TC for all your input! I appreciate it. Hope you and Baby are doing well.

If stocked with mosquito fish you really don't need to worry about mosquito or much in the way of extra feeding or filtration.



If you are doing active cooling in a greenhouse, then the whole heat exchange in the towers becomes less of an issue if you are keeping the daytime heat rise from getting too much and then not cooling overnight so the temp drop is minimized you could likely do towers or nft without the same extreme problems I had. But of course you will want to do some testing small scale to figure out what grows well for you in the different methods to figure out what will be most appropriate to grow what the chefs demand.

Dobermann, you may want to check this out. Look like a fairly simple construction process.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A67u3NyC9w8

Now don't think that I am saying not to do it, but keep in mind that Vegas is not that far from one of the most productive vegetable growing areas in the world. It would be impossible to out price Yuma, AZ. It will also require quite the horticulture skill to produce higher quality. You I'll need quite a bit of scale to do it. Along with quite a bit of salesmanship. Volume is also key there. For every Hugo's Cellar, there are vastly more buffets. Let's face it, Vegas is all about buffets. How? Because Yuma, AZ is just a little down the river, and thousands of acres are producing a very high volume of vegetables, some of which is very high quality.

Thumbs up to that!


Unfortunately, it's not uncommon for it to still be 100 at midnight during summer. It was only 109 today, and here at 11:30 pm, it's still 93 right now...... "It's a dry heat." LOL! Like that makes any difference to the fish.