Home Aquaponics Site Sketch

[B. Pearcy]

Tomorrow I plan to begin accumulating the needed supplies to finally construct my home aquaponics system.  At this point, I am leaning toward a continuous flow system. Here's a rough sketch of my vision:

 

I don't have any fancy software for making the sketch, so please forgive the crude drawing I made in Excel.  I hope I'm not too far off base, but I plan to have the 100 gallon Rubbermaid tanks raised high enough on concrete blocks that the water will flow back into the fish tank using gravity.  I'm not a plumber and have little plumbing experience, so I hope I can pump into both tanks at once and fine tune the flow better with spigots.  Will a 550 gph pump work for this purpose? Any suggestion on specific brands?

I am guessing in rough numbers that with washed river gravel as growing media the grow beds will not hold more than 25-35 gallons of water. I may be off with those figures, but I vaguely remember reading those figures in some online articles.

I will be going to pre-measure the tanks tomorrow at the local Tractor Supply. There is also a tank specialty store nearby if they don't have the 300 gallon in stock where I can order just about any kind of tank I could ever imagine. Since I have a 10% coupon I'm hoping Tractor Supply has one.

I understand something called a Uniseal works well in the tanks, although I'm not quite sure where to buy those. Will I be able to avoid PVC in this system, or will some PVC be unavoidable for the pipes?

Landscape weed control fabric runs about $20 for a 125' x 7' roll at Sam's Club, but I don't need nearly that much.

Any other stuff I should be considering that I've left off the list?

Some have suggested a sump be used, but I want to limit the footprint as best I can so that's why I'm thinking continuous flow will work best for my situation.

I plan to use a few Zip Grow towers run on a separate pump for aeration hanging from shephard's hooks or something.

I'm open to additional suggestions/opinions.

[B. Pearcy]

Holy cow! You are the bomb. LOL

My order will be sent soon.