I thought about doing the frame on the ground because of the weight. The FT I'm going to use is one of those huge tack feed tubs for horses from tractor supply company and those things stand up to horses jumping in them and kicking them over so I figured it might be ok. I guess I'll have to experiment. I was also thinking i was going to extend the boards The GB's are on to help support the nft tubes amd build legs going to the ground to help with that. Those Home Depot tubs were exactly what I was looking at for this design. As far as the 1:1 ratio, maybe I didn't understand it completely, but I figured my nft tubes were going to sort of add to that bringing it close to that. I could be wrong. I was definitely planning on getting a sponge filter of some sort for the pump. I'm almost wondering if I should do a smaller design just to get the hang of this or if I should just continue with this and experiment with it. Thank you guys for the input.