Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Setting up my first ap system in my basement. It's going to be a 410 gallon fish tank with two 4'x4' grow beds. SLO into the first growbed which will be media filled and subsurface constant flow, then overflow into growbed #2 which will be deep water culture, then overflow into sump where it'll be pumped back to my fish tank. I'm going to use hps lights, and fill my tank with channel cats.

Are you planning to flood the bed to an inch or two below the surface like most? Post up some pics of your progress . The only thing that comes to mind right off is that sometimes it's helpful to be able to flood the media bed for young plants or starting seeds. You can adjust the water level if you use a standpipe and make it removable/exchangable so don't glue any of the grow bed internal plumbing.

I'm going to try leaving about 3 or 4 inches of unflooded hydroton since my beds are 12 in deep. Hydroton seems to be pretty good about wicking moisture up. I'll post some pictures soon, the ones I took are too large to attach.

Ok I figured out how to resize my pictures. It's a work in progress.

As long as the roots can reach water that should work . Looks like a good start. I like the rectangular bed more than the square one. With the square bed I can't see if the feet are on both sides of the corner, I suspect they are but I'd worry if they weren't because of the weight.

I used to struggle with that too. Now I use a free program called Greenshot. It's a screen capture plug in. When the photo is on my screen, I size it how I want it, then hit printscreen and drag a box around what I want to capture. As I drag it shows me the dimensions in pixels, so I can see if I'm within the 900 max allowed by the forum. Save as, and post!

Scotty the rectangular container is my fish tank, the two grow beds are both square 4ftx4ft and they will have legs at all four corners with studs running underneath the plywood to support the bottom. I may actually throw a leg up in the middle of them as well just for additional support.

Ok so I've been steady plugging away and I've made some good progress. I just filled er up with water last night, and how a couple of leaks from loose bulkheads. After a little elbow grease she's leak free and running smoothly!

Looking very nice. I see it's an indoor system. That's a LOT of water so be careful to keep it contained over the long term. For example you have a LOT of bow on the long sides of your fish tank. You should consider adding another frame around the middle with the 2x4's on edge instead of flat. You could screw them to the existing 2x4 frame.

There is a lot of stress on those corners with that bow, so over time you may have a catastrophic failure. I hope not, but the bow in the side scares me.

Don't know the length of the bed, but it looks less than 8'.

Use a PVC Pipe Spreader bar 1-2" below the water line.

Good catch on that, I hadn't even noticed that it was bowing out like that. I'll have to add some more support. I certainly do not want over 400 gallons of water spilling into my basement..

Old Prospector why would I want a spreader?

Well after reviewing how you built everything, A Spreader bar won't help you.

You are going to find out that cutting the plywood like you did, and using 1x2 furring strips won't hold the shapes.

You need to build 2x4 pony wall sections at least.

Looks like I'll be pumping the water out and adding some more wood to that fish tank. It is bowed out significantly on both the long sides, and I can't get around to the backside which is pushing out against the basement wall.