Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Heya people!

Looking for some designs of vertical NFT's and towers! Any link to some good info on how to build the requirements and so on is highly appreciated.

Search for a thread on here by Joc. I think it was called fish farm or something like that. She made vertical grow towers and they seemed to work well.

I recall other similar threads going back a few years

I used the commercial Zip Grow towers for years. They worked very well.

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YouTube has lots of tower ideas. 4 inch sewer pvc slit dow the middle. Get the sewer end cap and drill a hole for fitting (I use the slip/threaded 3/4 fittings for hoses). Use a heat source (heat guns, torch, ext) to warm the hole you drilled the remove the heat and quickly thread the fitting. Let the cap cool before you unthread the fitting. Now you have a threaded hole. Cost me about 12 bucks a tower.

For filling, I never could quite grasp the NFT stuff. Saw a bunch of different ways to fill those towers and NFT with strings. Seemed sketchy. Then I found that pond filter media looks about right for the job, and while at the hardware store I saw trim to fit air filters. No additives or oils and looked like blue pond filters but large rolls and cheap and sold by the foot. Funny how the name of something changes the price even though it's all made from the same recycled plastic.

So a bit of research and each tower needs about 5 to 10 gph of flow. I have a lot more than that on mine, just dont let it be so high it sprays out the slit. I built a ball valves for feeding water each tower so I can balance the flow rates and bleed air when the pump is turned off. Works very well and everything is doing great. Only thing I notice is that before inserting plants. Wait till they are large enough for the roots to hit the back of the tower. Lost a few plants because I didn't realize the water was only percolating down the back of that area. Pulled the dead plants and inserted new ones deeper and it's good to go.

Couldn't figure out the NFT

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