I am going to try and get this thread back on track.
Being Spring break I had 2 days off from the college (as employees we get 2 of the 5 days), so I spent that time back on my latest obsession. Thursday I constucted the supports for the growbeds out of cinder blocks, 2x12's, and 4x4's. I wanted to go a little higher with them to accommodate a larger sump but that would of limited the amount of fall from the fish tank for my feed lines. It turned out quite well and is very sturdy. This is just the right length to hold the 9 growbeds I built earlier.



I had decided on pea gravel as my growbed media, and calculated that I needed 2.5 cu ft per growbed. Once I shopped around the cheapest I could find already packaged up was $3.28/.5 cu ft from Walmart. This would be around $135 for gravel. I just can't do that right now. I called a guy I grew up with, who owns a local gravel trucking company and he turned me on to a quarry about 30 miles away that might have what I was looking for. I finally was able to get a phone number for them and they had what I needed for $20 dollars a ton. Since I had read that limestone will buffer your PH (limestone is the predominate rock around here) I made sure that this was good hard river gravel in the pea pebble size.
This is where it gets interesting, When you go to a Rock Quarry with a half ton truck make sure you communicate with the loader to not overload your vehicle! They put one loader bucket in the back. I didn't think anything about wieght, until after I crossed the scale and stepped out to go in and pay. The truck was clear down on the frame stops and the tires were squished almost flat. The bill turned out to be $37 for 1.8 tons of pea gravel. I made it home (30 miles away), thankfully this is mostly rural and I was able to go about 45 mph without people running over me.

This is what 1.8 tons of pea gravel minus about 10 3 gallon buckets, looks like.


I spent the rest of Friday sifting and washing gravel. The pea gravel has some pretty small grit to it and I was really looking for something a 1/4" or larger. We had some sifters laying around, that we made for when the wife and I met my parents down at the diamond mine in arkansas. These worked fairly well for sifting out the smaller stuff. I will save it to use in cups, for the riverbed system I intend to build copied from Mommyhen's design.

Following Laurrie's recommendation, I used my cement mixer to wash the gravel. Even with the cement mixer this is still a huge amount of work. I still have another day of gravel washing in front of me I'm sure.



I managed to completely fill one growbed and partially fill all nine before it was quitting time. (didn't want to miss the BSG series finale!).



I am getting closer but I still have some hurdles to cross, I need to get the sumps constucted and the feed lines and the fish tank lines. I also need to get my pump, air pump and air stones. Not to mention fish and plants. Wow I thought I was a little closer.