Flood / Drain Aquarium system

[omri]

Hi!

  I'm new to aquaponics, and have a design in mind for a system I want to create, but I havent seen it anywhere. I want to fill up half of my aquarium with water and half of it with clay aggregate using a suspended chicken wire setup. I was then planning on flooding and draining the aquarium so that the water level in the aquarium would rise to cover the clay and drain to the level just below it. Do you see any problem with doing it this way? 

Thanks!

-O

[Steve R]

So most fish tanks are tempered glass bottoms and drilling that especially with out previous glass drilling experience is going to be very hard.

[omri]

I wasnt planning on drilling into the glass, just draining the aquarium a bit into a holding tank and flooding it back.

Steve R said:

So most fish tanks are tempered glass bottoms and drilling that especially with out previous glass drilling experience is going to be very hard.

[Glenn]

I think it would work fine as long as the area between the low level and high water lines are enough for the root structure of the plants you want to grow. Oxygen to the whole root zone being the concern. It's kind of  the way that active "raised" bogs work.

This method is avoided in larger AP systems, I think because we don't want fish or other critters hiding under the media and aerobic bacteria going berserk. That CAN be controlled with jet spraying to flush the area but I digress.

[loboy]

Hey Omri,

I would recommend against using chicken wire in a wet environment due to the metal leaching or rusting into the water.

What you are proposing can be simplified by using netted pots suspended above the fish tank. You could further simplify by using an air stone and an air pump to mist the bottom of the netted pots. I also would not block access to the fish. Since I do not exactly know your end goals I am just trying to help you simplify your idea.