Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Buckets of compost? What does that accomplish above the grow beds?

I even noticed in one video I saw about growing power that even the AP system is somewhat vertical since it had the fish tank and gravel bed in a lower layer and the plant grow bed layer above with hanging baskets over that. I think I even saw one unit that looked like fish tank on bottom with two tears of grow bed above and baskets above that. I think the middle level that wasn't very high and didn't get much light was the water cress layer.

Forget using AP in "aeroponics" IMO.... aeroponics has enough problems in terms of clogging with normal scheme water and nutrient mix....

Unless you prefiltered AP water to remove ALL solids and then filtered again with a fine micron screen to remove fine sediments... aeroponic systems would block within a day...

I wonder if anyone has used the old spinning disk kind of vaporizer method to do aeroponics instead of trying to use sprayheads. The spinning disk wouldn't clog though the pins around the disk might get quite gunky and reduce the amount of water particles that actually get suspended in the air.

For the amount of money they are talking about for a start up, something like that could be engineered. I agree completely but synaptoman inspired me with the water return for his project in SA with the vertical strawberry tube return to the tank.

Yep... but Synaptoman is running "flood & drain" media based aquaponics... not NFT...

Big difference... even then though... he does employ pre-filters...

I somewhat doubt he is using flood drain on his vertical tubes. Am I wrong? That would kind of defeat the purpose of the vertical tubes.

True Elston.. I believe they are drip fed... but AFAIK... they are still media filled...

NFT is a "medialess" technique... only....

Even the rockwool peppers I pictured... weren't NFT... they're drip fed...

The tomatos in the jumbo channels were NFT... but are usually drip fed rockwool...

I think it may be worth a go just for the craic
Admittedly you`d have to use progressively finer filters to get to a zero solids situation but given the amount of water you`d need (maybe 10-15gal us/day per 100ft3 of rootzone) it wouldn`t be that bad. Divert say 15gals/day to a dedicated filtering sump which will become the following days aeroponic supply. You`d still need normal growbeds but as an add-on it may increase the growing efficiency of a very small AP system due to less nutrient and water requirements. So thats another one on the to-do list

TCL,
The humidifier type spinning disc units make too fine a mist < 10um, you`d need something like an ultra low volume rotary sprayer which generates an average droplet of 50um. The hard part is getting them to spin at 10-12k rpm and not make any noise

Sorry... but I just don't see the point of going to all that effort and expense... as an add-on to a flood & drain aquaponics system...

Particularly as aeroponics is limited in terms of what vegetables can be produced... and could hardly be described as a space efficient method of production in comparison to NFT for xxxx number of plants...

Space efficiency depends how you lay it out. Quick calc says 500ft2 of plantable area with 300ft3 root space in a 144ft2 footprint should be do-able. It would hold a lot of basil/lettuce

That's about the equivalent area for 12 x 6mtr x 10 channel NFT tables... a total of 2400+ grow holes...

Ok Lettuces ..... NFT / Aeroponics / DWC ,, I'd say they all take about the same amount of space ( i.e lettuce basically touching each other when grown out).
Would there be any large "growth rate" differences between the 3 methods?
DWC just seems so easy , so inexpensive to set-up.

I like the idea of stacking NFT pipes vertically to make the use of the vertical space. Alot easier to do with NFT than it is with gravel beds.

AHHH I seperated gravel beds out of the question ,,,NFT / spray douvers /DWC .
For me ,, gravel beds for lettuce have already been proven as inferior,.....,, for most other plants they have been proven far superior.