Media & The Auto-Siphon

Lowe's provided a limestone-free bag of river rock for a few dollars, and Bodhi provided 75 liters of Hydroton (expanded clay) for $70, making the media for the grow bed the single most expensive item in the setup so far.  It's well worth it, though.

I'm going to see if I can't find a local source of expanded shale for the next grow bed, though.  In the meantime, here's my washed river stone:

I made a small media guard for the intake by drilling holes in a little tupperware container.  Here are a few pictures of my auto-siphon before I started cutting it down to adjust the fill height:

And here's the whole system:

As you can see, we decided to go with straps for support rather than building a pvc frame.  I was able to trade the fittings in for the straps.  They help, and I'm pretty comfortable with the stability of the bed now (knock on wood).  Here it is filling:

They sound like rice crispies when they drain.  The top layer will remain dry to cut back on evaporation:

The next step is to play with the flow rate on the autosiphon by making small adjustments to the holes in the bell, the height of the bell, etc.  Once I get that going smoothly, it'll be time to buy ammonia and a master test kit, and start cycling.   Then comes worms, plants, and fish!