Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

what would happen if the grow-beds are not completely leveled ?

They would work fine.

I'm guessing that if not level you could have areas that have the water too close to the surface (wet media) and some that are way below. Depends on how unlevelled the bed is.

Just level your media to solve this if already installed.

won't drain fully if slope is away from drain, though this is probably not that big an issue either.

Mine aren't and it works fine...

if you're OCD or perfectionist you will never sleep as well again knowing they're not level

As long as it drains alright that's the main thing

Well if your talking DWC then your growbeds could potentially disrupt your flow rate.

If the flow rate is slowed then there is potential for an increase in dead zones within the growbed.

Can cause the growbeds to fill faster than they are draining if your discharge pipe is not the correct diameter as well.

How will it disrupt the flow rate? i dont see it.

Neither do I
Personally I think people are over thinking a simple system... again!
There are no dead zones IMO
Water is fluid, having a 1 inch puddle after draining wont matter as next drain will flush it.

And hes asking "absolutely level" which indicates to me that we are talking about a bed that is not exactly spirit level flat. It wont make a lick of difference. All my GB's and DWC were all over the place and didnt see any issues.

every time you walked out and saw the wonky GB's you would think;

Why didn't I make them level!

Disrupts the flow on your DWC if the far end of the raceway is higher than where water flows in... if you have multiple raceways for your growbeds then more water will flow into one over the other. Thus creating a faster flow in the properly leveled growbed. I have actually seen a system where flow seized all together in one of the growbeds when it was off at the far end only by an inch or two.

If less flow is going through one raceway then one raceway will have more nutrient flow than the other one potentially affecting the plants growth.

Unfortunately when you have a rectangular shaped tank you always have potential for dead zones. They occur within the corners of the tanks. And if your flow is too slow not enough oxygen will push through these areas. Especially if you don't have air stones in the growbed region.

Now, your right. We don't want to over think and over complicate things.... The issues I am referring too I only will really see in very large systems with growbeds over 10 feet in length.

Its just something to keep in mind. If your building a system I like to do it right the first time and level it all off in the event that if its not level there could be potential issues...

I purposely set my IBC's up so they would have a slight (1/2 inch over 5 feet) slope. However, I positioned the IBC's so that the drain and the pump are on the downhill side of the FT. I did this so the fish poop would roll towards the pump at the low side of the FT. The GB on top of the FT can always be propped up to make them level because they don't weigh as much, so a few shims under the low side of the GB will do the job.

Your FT may not have solids collecting in it but it won't be because of such a slight angle to the bottom.

To get solids to settle "down slope" the angle must be 45d or greater. Look at the design of commercially made swirl filters and the like. They haves conical bottoms with 60d angles or even greater.