Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Shouldn't be that difficult to use most of the components you have. What size area do you have to work with?

I have 15 feet x 5 1/2 feet, with (dreams) of building a 15 feet x 8 1/2 feet greenhouse. Special circumstances: I have a playful (naughty) puppy German Shepard who is likely to destroy anything not protected by fence or too high for her to reach!

Besides choosing the wrong materials to use on some parts, I liked the arrangement of my first, failed attempt. The fish tanks, two 55 gallon barrels, were tall enough for my dog to not be able to see inside, and the plants were on top of the fish tanks, and extending about 4 1/2 feet above the fish tanks. It used a lot of vertical space, and not much horizontal space.

I want to use as much vertical space a possible in my next design. I have seen at least 2 or 3 commercial grow setups, but they were pretty expensive! Anther caveat: I am freshly unemployed, so what I can do now must be FREE or VERY CHEAP! Any real expenditures will have to wait till my next job. But I can plan!

I'm not sure about the dog staying away but you could do something with 5 gallon buckets which you may be able to find for free. Maybe 2 rows of buckets on a 2 x 4 frame with drains from both rows going to a pipe between the rows and flowing back into the tanks. I'm not sure how you pumped and drained to both tanks before but you could probably do it the same.

I'm not sure which way to plumb the buckets. I've used the Self Watering Rain Gutter Garden method for buckets full of potting mix as a wicking method but not in AP. That system uses a hole with a net pot in the bottom of the bucket which sits in a rain gutter filled with water. I don't think you'd get the full benefit of biofiltration this way.

You could set each bucket up with it's own standpipe and gravel guard. I'd make the gravel guards smaller diameter and I'd use a stand pipe that sticks up above the gravel guard making it easier to remove. You'd have to cut the holes for the overflow down lower but not so that you weaken the pipe to much. You could run constant flood without any fluctuations in water level for the Fish Tanks.

Finally you could use the Dutch Bucket system. Again you wouldn't get the full biofiltration but it would be better than the SWRG Garden method. There are some videos on U-Tube about how to make these using buckets. This is a pretty good one - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXy32Dr4Z4A

Might be able to mix and match some of these options so that you can cut holes in the sides of some containers and do a strawberry pot like arrangement.

P.S. I've also seen people building SWRG Gardens using 50 cent Walmart canvas shopping bags but the evaporation may be to great for this system.. Stability might be an issue as well. The advantage is air pruning of the roots. I've never tested this so check it out on YouTube and test it yourself if your considering it, the bags might leak to much.

I'll remind you that vertical growing doesn't have to be by planting small plants up high and having to pump water up to them. If you grow vines that can climb, that also counts as good use of vertical space and by doing it that way, you are letting nature (the plants) do the water lifting and then you only need to pump the water up high enough to water the roots of the plants and yet drain back to your tanks.

I also recommend making use of buckets. If you go to Costco or the bakery/deli department of your grocery store you might be able to get free buckets that had been used for food products like potato salad, pickles, frosting, condensed milk, ice cream and the list goes on. If you are lucky they may already be washed or you might have to wash them yourself. But if you were to put some braces across between your barrels and set up the barrels on top that would put them up high (though you should make sure you secure everything so that a big growing puppy can't knock things off when getting up on hind legs to try to inspect this new contraption. I have a couple 70+ pound puppies and while sweet and well meaning, they can still cause damage and I would hate to have a bucket of gravel fall on them any more than I want them breaking the plumbing when they knock something down.)

Trying to set something up where you trickle small flows of water down into vertical growing methods is generally NOT going to be as effective as simply planting in buckets or beds of media especially in a hot dry climate where temperature swings, leaking water, water level, and water stability are of perhaps extreme importance (where I am it is humid and water is fairly plentiful but I still warn people that pumped vertical growing has it's drawbacks.) You can probably grow plenty of lettuce in buckets around larger plants that will grow up and provide some shade to the lettuce during warmer weather.