A peek at our Aquaponic tower system, (And a review of Zipgrow):

We created our own aquaponics system a couple years ago, after much research and planning and research and research!
(Seriously, my husband spent SO many hours researching this!! More than I had patience for!)

Full disclaimer: This system has been shut down as of a few months ago. Between my husband working full time and myself trying to homeschool and manage the rest of our gardening efforts and livestock, neither one of us had the time and energy to give this system the upkeep it it needed to thrive.)

It consists of two separate, but adjacent systems, actually.

Each system has a IBC tote, (food grade), a sump tank, (livestock tank in the ground to help keep the water cool), and one to two rows of 'Zipgrow' towers. We had gone back and forth between using towers and beds, and decided on the towers finally, due to the supposed less water usage.

Sump tank

The towers

The water drip tubes

The Zipgrow Towers were an interesting design, expensive, yes, but they had potential.

In a traditional grow bed, there is a lot of surface area which facilitates a lot of evaporation, which means you are having to refill the water quite frequently. With the towers, the water is contained and much less evaporation is supposed to happen. Sounds peachy, right?

Ehh, not so much...

The system was pretty simple, you have the IBC tote with the fish inside, crapping up the water. The dirty water drains into the sump tank in the ground. There is a water pump in the sump that pumps the water up into the towers and also back into the tote. The water in the towers drains into the gutters at the bottom, and drains down into the sump. This worked well. The plants grew quite vigorously at first, (when we had time to keep up with water supplements, pest control, etc.)

It was pretty encouraging, actually.

However, as time went on, some problems popped up...

Now, I want to be clear, the customer service at Zipgrow was great. The towers were expensive, but well made, and I don't have any issues with that. Quality product and lots of communication between the customer and company. There is a Zipgrow facebook page that customers can join and share experiences and help out other 'Zipgrowers'. They also have an online 'aquaponics school' that you can attend. Very informative and loads of wonderful information.
Overall I would recommend doing business with this company.

My issue isn't with the Zipgrow company at all.

There are just a couple things that make these towers impractical. At least, the way we were using them. (Which is one of the recommended ways...)
First of all, when you have large plants growing in them, over time, they tend to hang down just from the weight of the plant. Tomato plants, egg plant, peppers, etc. And if you have a stem coming from inside the tower, hanging at a downward angle, with water dripping down inside the tube, what happens?!

You guessed it.

Water drips along the stalk of the plant and onto the ground!
This is one of the main things I fought with and was taking up my time. Trying and trying to get the plants and the water tubes positioned correctly so the water stayed in the tower and was not lost. Of course, I was constantly filling up the sump tanks because this task was pretty much impossible. Well, maybe we should just grow lettuce and other greens in them!
NOPE
Even the smaller plants would sit there and drip and drip.
Now, if we installed the towers OVER a grow bed, this would probably be okay. I think, honestly, that's the only way it would work.

See the wet dirt under that squash plant?

Second issue with the towers is the drip tubes.

We used the recommended drip valves and tubing.
These darn things got clogged up OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER again...
This was also a huge time waster and one of the reasons we shut it down. I was spending too much time, several times a day, unclogging these things. In the heat of summer, if I didn't catch it quick enough, the whole tower would be limp and hanging down, plants dying. Now this issue could be solved with some work, a whole different drip system without those little valves would help. But at that point we had already realized that it wasn't going to work for us so we have not yet tried to come up with an alternate system.

And the last issue that caused us to shut it down?

Pest control

The slugs attacked the strawberries. The aphids were on everything. The stinkbugs invaded in an epic fashion and wreaked smelly havoc. Flea beetles are of the Devil. Grasshoppers munched on everything.
It was a mess.
The plants were connected to the fish, so we could not use commercial pesticides, (not that we wanted to).

We tried a few tentative things to manage the pests. Ladybugs, removing by hand, etc, but we just were not aggressive enough, and did not have the time to really get in there and manage it the way it needed to be done.

We decided that keeping the system up and running was just too much work for not enough gain.

Over time, the pests became too much, the plants needed more supplements than we could keep on top of, and the veggies just did not produce well because of their lack of care. It was taking more work and electricity than it was worth.
It was a difficult decision, but for the best. We have not got rid of our equipment. Hopefully in the future we can try aquaponics again; it really has great potential. I don't care much for the towers, but my husband wants to give them another try. Perhaps with greens only, and over a grow bed, or a LARGE drip-catching drain... I would like to try grow beds, although I do understand that evaporation may be an issue.
I'm thinking when the kids are older and able to help more, and perhaps if we have a lifestyle change which would allow my husband to work less hours, well, who knows. :)

We shall see!

Thanks for reading, hopefully some of you out there find this information helpful!

Have a wonderful day, Steemians!