Challenge Accepted - Part 1

I'm going to write a short off-topic series on a challenge my wife issued to me the other night. We have two turtles in a 55 gallon aquarium, and I can't seem to keep up with the filter cleaning (turtles are like Oscars and Plecos in terms of waste generation, only 1000x worse...well, ok, Oscars are pretty messy, too). I was complaining about the constant filter maintenance, and my wife asked me why I didn't just build out an aquaponics system on top of the aquarium.

This is pretty ingenious. I have a "baby AP" system running in the kitchen to grow herbs, and it works amazingly well. It's a simple flood and drain configuration with the pump set to a 15 minute on, 45 minute off timer (to give the roots time to dry out a bit). Four goldfish power the "fertilizer machine" in a 10 gallon tank, and the grow bed sucks up the fertilizer as quick as the fish can produce it. The plant growth is quite amazing, too.

So here comes the fun part. I have a 55 gallon tank for the turtles. The grow bed will obviously need to be:

1) larger
2) custom-built
3) cheap

I'm throwing in #3 for fun, since most of us don't have tons of lumber and plumbing laying around. I want to build it solid and for the future, but I don't want to spend more than absolutely necessary. My wife is keeping me honest here by pointing out what scrap lumber there is in the garage and such...gotta love it =)

Here's my inspiration, a kit my wife purchased for me on father's day 2016 (that has the goldfish and herbs):



It's available at:

https://www.aquasprouts.com/products...nt=12578690820

I have a 30 minute resolution timer setup to start the LED grow lights at 7 AM and turn them off at 5 PM (the grow lights were purchased separately from the kit).

I have a rough design hammered out that I will post in a followup here.

Hope to have more on the build in the coming days.