Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

You can form a ladder from multiple of these modules, as high as your pump head can go.

Here is a rendering of two vertical ends zig-zagging down at 45 degrees (one inlet and one outlet) as a kind of building block for towers. The idea is to balance enough unobscured space for a plant with the needs for support and for the plumbing.

The rendering shows 2, 4, 6, 8-sided towers, made with 1, 2, 3, 4 ladders and requiring 1, 2, 3, 4 inlets and outlets each. One without plants so you can see the structure better. The posts could be thick wire or maybe 1/2 PVC pipe, or the towers can be hung from an arbor on wires instead.

The ladders can be stacked into a rectangular volume instead of towers, to make a lattice like the original goal. The plants can get tightly packed into a volume rather than just a 2D plane, up to but short of the point where they shade each other too much.

... our weather has been crap for the last two months now. Rain every day, and now it's cold to boot! Grrr

Came in to work ate this morning, in order to spend time with my plants and the sun! Haven't seen the sun in two months, I expect the plants to like this weekend. Cantalope is ravaged by mildew, some of its leaves have aphids on them too. Broccoli sprouts finally doing something, but little green worms are putting holes in the leaves. One of the green peppers had a bug living in it, the kind with a big claw-like jaw if you know what I mean. I squashed that one.

The small green bean plant that was put into the second bottle crapped out, so I replaced it with a lettuce plant. The other green bean plant on the upper bottle continues to grow with new shoots. The pepper in the flood table will like the warmer sunny weather I expect.

Had stopped feeding the fish the last couple of days because the colder weather had caused them to stop eating the food.

Basil plants are starting to flower.

Plans for the Winter are PVC hoop covers over the FT and maybe another one for plants where the rail troughs are now. Hinged so the whole cover will lift up like a lid. I already have greenhouse plastic for free from the local greenhouse's free pile beside the road!

Hey Don,

I have to change my greenhouse leanto design to a simple vertical wall and this looks like the perfect idea.

Will the roots get enough oxygen?

Do you think one will need to filter out the solids coming from the fish tank first?

In the past, I've grown strawberries in the ground (along with alot of weeds). So berries are the first thing I'm going to try. Can't get plants until March

I better get busy collecting bottles. Definitely going to follow this thread!

Hi Bob:

They might get enough oxygen, the pepper plant is getting water from a pump on a timer, which to me seems like the preferred situation. This allows the roots to not be soaked and to get some air. The bottle plants are getting water continuously because it's hooked up as an add-on. Some plants might not like that. That said all the plants in the trough are sitting in water that is very slowly replaced with no extra aeration and they are doing well.

Definitely need to filter through something first to reduce solids. I've been wondering about using a wide pipe with floating media in it, pump would go to the bottom of the pipe, through media, up to the level of the bottle inlets. This would be like the trash can with charcoal in it I'm using for the filter now, but taller and narrower.

Watch this space, we'll see how the plants do like this...

How much on/off time on the pepper plant?

Flow rates?

For summers here in Minnesota I'm may have to figure out how to keep the root zones relatively cool.

Any ideas for cooling the root zone, anyone on the forum?

I'm thinking of trialling day neutral strawberries. Any suggestions anyone?

Right now it's 15 on 15 off, but it could be more time off because there is no danger of it drying out in this weather. Just enough flow to wet the roots well, covering them. Some cooling might happen from the upper plants shading the lower ones. I plan to paint the bottles silver to reflect light. Use the search field for looking for info about strawberries. I do remember talk about day neutral types on here not long ago. Btw I have minnows, like you had in the bucket. They are a good placeholder to occupy a system. And they are a bridge between the low animals like daphnia and the higher ones like the bigger fish. And if they have problems no big deal. And they seem to reproduce very easily, there were lots of babies in the sump where I kept them.

Guy at work emailed me this picture of his compost bin this morning, I breathlessly explained how awesome BSF larvae are.

I hope he's going to send you some of those in exchange for all that great information.

Crazy snowstorm coming through tonight, predicting 10-12" here!

Hi Dave... already got a foot up here in NH! Just read through your thread... great info! And thanks for the input you have been giving on mine. Do you plan on heating your water during the winter, or just sticking with a cold-hardy fish?

Hey, I think we ended up with maybe three inches of accumulation at most but it would have been more without the melting. Big flakes all day long, like it was January or something.

I have been planning to switch to trout and was really close but I need a new deep cycle battery for backup. I resolved to not get any trout until I have that for the air pump at least. It may end up being an early Xmas present from my in-laws LOL.

Dumping pictures, I think my system has peaked for this year, snowstorm came and killed the pepper and tomato plants. Learned a lot this year from the outdoor system. Will be working up some strategy for handling the Winter, it's so cold now that it practically is Winter now.

Lettuce raft was very successful despite my not maintaining it well. Need deeper foam to not waterlog the pots so much, but the lettuce plants really like living in the raft. Definitely going to keep using them.