Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I am building a lined wood tank. Inside measurements are 8' long 4'wide and about 2' high.

I am using wood pallets covered with plywood for the bottom and stud framed plywood covered walls. I could line it with a material that looks like cardboard but is plastic and use silicone for the corners. Or, I could cover the walls and bottom with heavy poly and silicone the corners.

Will silicone stick to poly, and how long should it cure before filling?

In my experience it works, but not terribly well. Takes 2 days to cure.

You might try getting a pond liner so it's just 1 piece inside your tank

Think I'd go with the liner as well Brent

ditto

does anyone have any pictures of a wooden grow bed being built?

Live Beyond's system is a classic ....

http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/vie ... 60&start=0

and recently there's Bkausfish....

http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/vie ... 4971#74971

and Thomas' system too

http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/vie ... php?t=1599

My apologies Thomas... and such a good and documented example as well

i have decided to go with a one piece liner. I found one that is about 45 cents per square foot. It is a pvc line, but should do the trick for the winter.

How do I deal with wrinkles in the liner?

don't worry about them!

if you mean the wrinkles in the bottom, you can smooth them out by hand or bare feet as it is filling

If you mean the larger ones on the side walls, arrange the linder so there is one or two folds on each side or corner. You will always have these.

Steve

There is a better liner than PVC but it can't be seamed without special equipment. And cheaper only $0.25 sq ft and free shipping and I'm using it and I like it If you don't want to seam it works great

http://www.fishfarmhatchery.com/index.html

Where do you get pvc that cheap? Is epdm easier to seam? If I use it as a unseamed liner, will the folds and wrinkles creat problems?

Just thinking ahead for future plans.

Brent (and Diego) - I just finished my system with a wooden growbed, lined with 0,5mm PVC, and a tank with 1mm EPDM rubber.

The tank took quite a while to build, because we dug a big hole in the ground to put it in, and then we cut the rubber and made seams which we really shouldn't have done, because we had multiple leaks afterwords. My advice - just fold the liner, DON'T cut it and make seams (not only is it more leaky, it is also more time consuming and it's harder to get wrinkles out).

The growbed however was very easy to build; in fact, designing it and getting the materials took longer than building. Having learnt from our mistake with the tank liner, we just folded the growbed liner.

For the tank, we sandwiched the rubber between the wooden frame and wooden lats. For the growbed, we just glued the PVC to the wood. Both worked great.

We only had problems with wrinkles with the tank liner, because we made the mistake of cutting it and making seams.
For the growbed, we didn't get any wrinkles in the bottom, and the wrinkles in the sides were easy to get out.
One thing though; if you use PVC in the sun it can get quite hot, and it expands slightly, so if you don't want wrinkles in the liner, you should work in the shade.

I'm sorry I have no pictures of the final stages yet, I'll try to put them up this week (camera USB wire is broken).

Anyways, good luck!