Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi everyone!

First off, this is my first post on this forum! Woot!

A little bit about me...I've kept fish as a hobbyist and been a fisherman my whole life. I guess you could say fish are in my blood a bit. I've just gotten into gardening and green landscaping so I figured this was a nice route to blend two of my passions. I've been working in a public aquarium for ~ 5 years so I've developed some skill at plumbing and designing systems. Aquaponics excites me because my favorite part about the aquarium industry is life support operations and exhibit design/construction.

This site has some pretty exciting stuff

I'm making some horizontal vinyl fence post grow systems (5" fence post) and I was curious how you guys attach the end caps in a way that allows for easy cleaning? I was thinking about just gluing them with some PVC glue but then realized I couldn't get back in there if I needed to. My biggest worry is plugging the fence posts with route wads and then having a flood, any tricks for this or is this a non-issue?

Also, what do you use to connect your different rows as the water trickles down through the system.

Last question (well, maybe)...is there an optimum flow rate/water depth that each pipe should be running? I'm sure depth has something to do with what you are trying to grow..but I was curious about the "dwell time" of the water flowing through the pipes.

Thanks a lot everyone,

Sean

not an expert on vertical systems at all, but I would suggest using the same tubing used in drip irrigation for supplying the water to the towers, and use a typical house gutter to collect the water at the bottom of each row of towers, have those gutters drain into a common 4" pvc pipe which then drains back to the sump tank.

as far as flow rates, you could check out Bright Agrotech on youtube, they have a lot of info on grow towers.

These will be horizontal grows. Thanks for the feedback!

lol,.. I read horizontal, but my brain processed it as vertical, probably because of the use of the vinyl fence post,..

sorry I wasn't much help.

The video was a big help, thanks!