Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I'm making new gravel grow bed using 3/4" gravel as grow media.
My problem is the gravel here, in Thailand, has smaller gravel mix in(half of them, by weight).
So can someone suggest me should I sort The smaller gravel out?

I afraid that using smaller gravel will cause clog up.

Some chicken wire and a small wood frame....give it a shake and let the little stuff drop through. It will be a lot of work though!

Thanks DéjàVoodoo.
I've made that already.

Depending how much smaller I would not bother.

I bought 14mm scoria ans some of the gravel is maybe 2mm.

If you have sufficient large ones, clogging shouldnt occur.

Vlt, the common hydroton I can find here is 8-16mm size which is smaller than the common 3/4" aggregate gravel being used. The hydroton sorting is about half and half. Does that mean it is more prone to clogging? I see a lot of systems here that uses hydroton, are there any common problems associated with it? Thanks.

how small is the small stuff? I have media at home that averages about 10mm and it's fine.. Some might only be about 5mm, but most is around 10.

Yeah that's kinda true. I'm seeing what we petroleum engineers always deal with, the particle size distribution size curve with these hydroton, a 8-16mm is really 5-16mm distribution. However, if you say it's fine then I have gained the confidence

Here is a sample of particle size distribution curve:

Hi Ao+
I believe sorting now will save you a lot of work later
I made a lot of work for myself
With my pilot project I started with basically what you have
Then later I added 6-8mm stones
The....I sifted removed all the smaller stones in the system (12mm and smaller)
Then again I did the same exercise keeping all the stones above 18 mm
Ended up with stones bigger than +- 19 mm
Let's say i sifted a lot of stones hard work
Going bigger can only be to your advantage
Depending on the amount you need for your system
The less stones small system I will go for smaller stones
But with big grow beds...I would go big 25-35 mm stones
This was my finding with my pilot project …
Less maintenance….
yust me thinking

Many things affect what size media will be appropriate. I use what they call 1/2" brown river rock here. And that means it is mostly rocks between 1/4" and 1/2" in size but I use plant baskets to wash it to make sure I'm not putting much of the sand that is mixed in, into my gravel beds. This media seems to work very well in my timed flood and drain beds but I have noticed that between plant roots and sliming that a constant info into such media can start to spread over gravel before percolating down into the media so if running constant inflow to the beds with siphon drains or constant flood it would be worth it to go with mostly the larger media like 1/2" up to 3/4" and perhaps even larger? But if you will be running a timer to do timed flood and drain, you are probably fine not sifting the media too much, just rinse to make sure you get rid of the sand.