Hi there, welcome!
As for a grid, if you are doing ebb n flow (or Flood and drain) you don't need to bother with a grid. If flooding and draining, the water will get everywhere through the bed even if it just enters the bed at one corner (as many of mine do.) The grid will be just extra plumbing parts you don't need and as noted they can clog. You should have a ball valve at the inlet of each grow bed though and probably another T off with ball valve just above your fish tank to return any extra flow for additional aeration (this way you don't need to restrict the pump if it is powerful and you get extra circulation to boot.)
Yes, pictures and plans, we love em!!!
As for starting without fish, I highly recommend it. Unless you have a great source of sludge and pre-cycled gravel, fishless cycling is much less stress. You can use pure ammonia (make sure there are no other additives like detergent or anything.) Urea firtilizer has also been used but again make sure there are no sneaky additives in it that would be bad for you or the fish. I've heard of people simply using fish food or other rotting stuff but that could get stinky and perhaps foster bad bacteria as well as good. And of course my favorite, Hummonia *that's right* Pee, Urine, Liquid Gold, fee firtilizer Actually better than fee since many people pay to flush it away with nice clean drinking water to pollute more water!
If you are caught up by the yuck factor, remember that Aquaponics is all about eating food grown from fish poo. Here are a couple things to keep in mind, to fishless cycle even a 600 gallon system, I used less than one urinations worth per day. For a 50 gallon system, It probably could have been cycled on about 50-100 mil of urine per day. If worried about pathogens that could be in urine (like e. coli) you can age the urine in a small sealed bottle for a couple weeks, this gives the urea time to change to Ammonia which kills e. coli. Aging it has the added effect that you can take readings relatively quickly after dosing the system where as fresh urine or urea take time to change into Ammonia and get the cycling started. Be ware that time delay if using fresh urine or urea as it is easy to think you need to dose more when really you need to wait.
I have now gotten a taste of getting lots of fish into a non-cycled system, don't do it if you are at all busy and/or your water supply isn't plentiful. (My quarantine system wasn't cycled yet when I got my tilapia. So I am now having to restrain my self from feeding as much as they want. I'm having to do water changes and worry about the high temps, ammonia, pH and Nitrite. Sigh.) I definitely like fishless cycling and urine is better than free.
The only time I ever noticed an odor from using urine was as I measured out a dose for the system. If you notice a bad urine odor from a system at any other time, you are probably dosing Waaaaayyyy too much.
Side note, if you have a system empty of fish for any period of time but you don't want the bacteria to all die off, you need to provide a source of ammonia there too. Feeding the system Hummonia can also keep your plants alive while you don't have fish.
Good luck!
I'm kinda metrically challenged too.
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