Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Before we pulled our system down due to shifting house we had strawberries growing in horizontal PVC 90mm storm water pipe and also the gravel beds.

The strawberries in the GB's went fantastic healthy plants, average root ball and plenty of fruit.

while the tubes ones.....Nuturient water was pumped up 2m high and flow/trickled down six rows of pipe, timed constant water flow but just covering their roots, which grew like crazy and produced about four fruit total.

The water was the same for both.

We are starting to plan rebuild and I managed to get 8 HFT @2.4m long for nothing (legally) What can I do to improve growth in tubes. I understand no salt and a slightly higher PH

Strawberries like a lower pH, commercial hydroponic growers run a pH of about 5.8 from memory.

The plants in the pipes probably got less oxygen and warmer water, especially if you were running the gravel bed as F&D.

If you are going to run horizontal pipes again, I would use 100mm DWV instead of 90mm stormwater pipe, it has about 3x the wall thickness and you can use 80mm net pots in it. The thicker wall means it's much stronger, so less bracing etc, gives less heat transfer to the water on warmer days, and no chance of algae build up inside the pipe, hold the 90mm up to the sun and you'll see what I mean.

I would mount each length completely level and don't cascade the water from one pipe down to the next etc. If you run them as a cascade the plants on the lower levels get warmer water with less oxygen.

Have a water feed into, and a drain/return line out of each pipe, at opposite ends. Have the inlet near the top in one end cap, and the outlet, which determines the flood level, in the other cap so it gives a water depth that touches just the bottom 10mm of the net pot. This gives a water depth in the pipe of about 45mm, deeper if you use smaller net pots.

Try and achieve a reasonable flow rate through each length of pipe. The individual water feed to each pipe, larger water volume in the pipes, and good flow rate through them, gives much better oxygenation of the roots and less chance of heat build up in the water.