Comment

Comment by TCLynx on January 23, 2011 at 6:06pm

Yes my media is gravel.  1/2" brown river rock is what they call it around here.

 

Well I've only run a couple beds constant flood long term.  I've had a few random plants not do well but I can't be certain it was because of the constant flood or not.  As long as the water is constantly flowing and well aerated, most plants seem to do fine with it.

 

Biggest problem I've had (and this is more to do with the constant inflow as I've had it happen in siphon flood and drain beds with constant inflow too) is the sliming up or "fish poo pavement" around where the water enters the grow bed, this is actually a function of the bio-slime but the water tends to flow over the gravel more and more over time and one must "poke it with a stick" more and more often and the gravel stays wet there.  A distrobution grid might help against this.

 

Anyway, the constant flow/flood is doing just fine now during the cool weather and I don't really think the hot weather would have to much of a negative effect on it either.  I do prefer to run timed flood and drain with my indexing valves but for now constant is fine till spring comes.

Comment by Aaron on January 23, 2011 at 5:58pm

TCLynx - It looks like your medium is gravel.  Is this the case?  Also doesn't a constant flood tank develop root rot especially in your warmer temps?  I'm a newbie with lots of questions. Keep up the good growing and mind the chickens - Aaron

Comment by TCLynx on January 23, 2011 at 7:50am

What kind of siphon Nick?  If you were to do an internal bell siphon you would probably just need to adjust or adapt pipe sizes and figure out how to do crenalations so the bell will sit appropriately above a stand pipe.

 

If doing an external siphon, I simply remove the stand pipe and build the siphon or loop siphon on the plumbing outside the bed.

Comment by Nick Rizzo on January 23, 2011 at 7:39am

Thank you for the link answers my question. The pipe it self is not glued to the uniseal I guessing so if these was converted to a siphon what would I need to do different

Comment by TCLynx on January 23, 2011 at 7:09am

ok here is a link to an album with some pictures inside the bed

album

Comment by TCLynx on January 23, 2011 at 7:06am

Hum, I'm sure I took some pictures inside the new beds before we filled them with gravel.  I'll have to see if I can find them.

 

Basically, I plumb a uniseal down near the bottom of the grow bed and push some pipe through.  I slip the gravel guard on and stick an elbow on that.  The bottom few inches of the growbed don't drain, no big deal, it's 24 inches deep.  The I simply use a stand pipe of the apropriate height.  Doing the normal timed flood and drain, that stand pipe has some holes around the bottom just above where it fits into the elbow, when I want to do continuous flood, I just pull the stand pipe up and flip it over or swap it with one that doesn't have holes.

 

I've found being able to pull the stand pipe and swap it or whatever to be very helpful.  The first couple stock tank beds I did, I put the holes in the elbows and the gravel guards in those beds don't allow me to swap the elbows out.  Not so good.

Comment by Adam Shivers on January 22, 2011 at 10:27pm

This is so cool! I also subscribed on youtube (I'm Apaulshi on there but have yet to make videos. not sure I know how yet but looking forward to it. Hey, thanks for all your help!

Comment by Nick Rizzo on January 22, 2011 at 9:06pm

Next time you build another grow bed can you take some pictures of how you have your standpipe/siphon done. I know you said you have them now on continous flow so your not using a sipon

Comment by TCLynx on January 22, 2011 at 7:48pm

Yep they are 100 gallon stock tanks and they are filled all the way with gravel.  I figure using the 100 gallon ones actually provides me more filtration while saving me money on building stands seeing as the 100 gallon stock tanks only cost a few dollars more than the 50 gallon ones anyway.  I can simply place the 100 gallon tanks on concrete blocks and they are at a comfortable working height.

 

If I were to use 50 gallon tanks as beds, I would need 12 of them to get the same amount of filtration and I would either have to bend over to plant in them or build stands.

Comment by Nick Rizzo on January 22, 2011 at 7:43pm

Are those 100gal feed tanks? And are they filled complete with gravel right. was thinking about just using the 50 gal feed tank for a grow bed what do you think