Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey guys was at the big B store the other day looking for light wieght growing medium and found these bags of Perlite that would hopefully make good strawberry towers.
"Proganics - Hydro Perl Grow Bags"
I have set one up standing in a black plastic planter pot. Put a slit in the top and feed the water in, and then a series of small slits snaking down the bag where I have shoved some strawberry shoots, and then stabed a couple of small holes in the bottom of the bag for drainage.
I'm hoping that it will work. Anyone tried this or a similar method of strawberry towers? I have not read very good things about perlite but I'm hoping as a short term throw away and replace style GB it could work. They were pretty cheap too.
I will post a couple of photos shortly.

Here's a picture of them...



Given Perlites ability to retain moisture and strawberries aversion to having their roots too wet... supposedly....

You might have to limit your water supply to either a drip irrigation style or intermittent watering....

But give them a go and let us know....

Most peoples aversion to Perlite is due to it being "uncontrollable"... and getting into pumps, filters, growbeds etc....

If you've "slit" the bags.... this could be a problem....

Yeah its not very nice stuff and I can see how it could cause havoc with pumps. I'm hoping that I will be able to keep it confined to my GB's and out of my FT and therefor out of the pump but we'll see. here is a photo of my tower.

And another one.

To have strawberrys like that you cant have salt in your system heres whats left of my strawbery tower its a herb tower

Ahh now thats an idea, I was thinking of growing other things in the tower if it is too wet for the strawberries. If you run herbs in a tower like that is there any problem with over saturation or will the herbs love it. I really need a quick fix, light weight, limited foot print filtration solution for my prototype system and if I can only run water through perlite at 15min on and 1.5-2hrs off then it doesnt really solve my filtration problem.

Water from the fishtank is running through this 3 min every 1/2 hr
At the moment my whole system is running 3 min every 1/2 hr

Sorry Bndybear... but if you're trying to use this for filtration... then I just don't think it's going to cut it.... even if you had continual flow...

Essentially... it would just be a "trickle tower"... with a few plants in it.... you'd be better off with clay balls...

If you want a vertical "tower" solution, that both filters and grows plants... then look at "Nates Vertical....." thread....

Perlite has Absolutely no place in AP. Full stop no return. It is simply too fine. Using FF's towers filled with hydroton or gravel is far and away the best way to go, but even then, strawberries are a struggle.

At some stage, you WILL have to add salt to your system, and the first things to fall over and die are strawberries.

Please save yourself and remove those towers quickly, or you'll end up with an empty fish tank when the towers overflow, unless they are above the fish tank...

Perlite is evil, evil stuff in a contaminated water system like AP. Works in clean hydro systems though.

Not really OBO.... it's still a PITA in hydro as well...

Yeah, So Dont Use It Then

Yeah starting to get the picture, think I have found another method for my filtration problems after reading Nates vertical.... thread. Will be doing some more homework on his vertical GB/NFT setup and removing the perlite and vermiculite to use as wicking beds only.

An 80:20 mix of vermiculite:perlite... is a common hydro seedling starter mix... and would probably work OK in a wicking bed...

Yep as above i had a few good crops from vemiculite [ probley 2 years ] before it started to give trouble [breaking down getting in the pumps ect ] and its taken 2 years to almost clean it up evern now when the sun is in the right spot theres a few specks flashing in the water
So now all my vemiculite is in wicking beds
Wicking beds i see you are running them at 80%full it should be 30% and NEVER drain them back to fish tanks

Yet another reason to possibly avoid perlite, On another forum some one brought up that the small particles that perlite breakds down to, are as bad for fish gills as they are for our lungs. I don't know how true that is but seems all the more reason to look for other options.

Oh, and I did once make a hanging bag of perlite and ran water through it. The water flow was too strong and was eroding the perlite in the bag at an alarming rate. Make sure the water flow into your strawberry tower bags is very gentle.

As to the towers. (other than Nate's towers) Ever vertical solution I've seen isn't really much for providing filtration, they most seem more like modified NFT which requires alternative filtration above and beyond what the towers can provide. I know some people that are using vertigrow towers but they can only take intermittent watering and even then, that greenhouse had huge amounts of fish water escaping the system where it was overflowing out the tops of the vertigrow containers.

So, having some vertical growing is great but please don't depend on it for filtration unless it is actually a filter that has been adapted to grow plants (like Nate's towers.)