I checked in there out of curiosity, to see how it stacked up against All Seasons (mentioned below). First, I’d like to assure you I have no vested interest in either; I’m equally interested in each supplier to find out who has the best selection, staff, prices, etc.

I found T&T was even more out-of-the-way and obscure than All Seasons. Whereas I thought All Seasons looked like a hole in the wall from the outside, the inside is fairly capacious and it’s great to see lots of hydroponic/aquaponic setups all over the store to demonstrate the technology. T&T had none of this. Also, T&T had a much smaller selection, stacked on shelves unattractively with very little organization, and sadly, the same lack of obvious pricing information as All Seasons. Also, the staff at T&T consisted of one guy sitting at a desk playing computer games, whereas All Seasons’ owner will cheerfully greet you and is very helpful/knowledgeable. I’m really leaning towards All Seasons at this point.

One problem I really have with both is lack of signage (describing product sections, indicating what the products are for), and worse, lack of pricing labels on either the shelves or the products. It’s really hard to get an idea of what your entire setup is going to cost, when you can’t walk around the store and tally up prices of components. I don’t know about other people, but I for one am a pretty solitary person and I’d rather not have to engage the staff if I don’t have to. I like them to be around for when I need help, but the more I can do myself, the better. Having to talk to the staff just results in awkward situations when you decide not to buy (or at least not straight away).

Anyhoo, my conclusion is that T&T appears to have the standard supplies, but only if you know what you’re looking for and don’t really mind what it costs (though again, the pricing issue affects All Seasons as well).

I have the feeling the grow bed is too shallow in order to exert enough pressure on an autosiphon to make it function. I will probably have to switch to a water pump.

I’ve seen pumps at Home Depot for $15/$30/$more CDN, depending on how high the water needs to be pumped. I don’t need a particularly high flow rate, as long as the water can make it to the grow bed at all. The fish tank is about 1.5 feet deep, and it is about another 1.5 to 2 feet from the surface of the water to the grow bed. So do I need a pump capable of 2 feet of lift (water surface to grow bed) or 3-4 feet of lift (tank bottom to grow bed)?

My fish are mostly small tetras. Hopefully they don’t get sucked into the pump. Perhaps I could put some window-screen or something over it. I also have thousands/millions of Malaysian Trumpet Snails which can be very tiny, but I guess they’ll just get sucked into the pump and chewed up or spit onto my plants. Hopefully they don’t have an adverse effect on the plants.

The timer thing is part of what I was hoping to avoid. Most timers work at best in 15-minute increments, and 15 minutes on for 45 minutes off (or whatever the appropriate interval is) seems like overkill. I also have to worry about creating an overflow with high enough capacity to handle the flow of a water pump, and should something go wrong, a water pump can dump a lot more water on my floor than the airlift method.

Anyway, thanks for the help on this.

I’ve identified the problem: the ”Get Video Access” box is collapsed/empty in Firefox. Just a header with a fraction of an inch of white below it. When I opened the page in Safari it worked properly. Perhaps you can pass this info on to the web developer(s) and it will allow the error to be repaired.

Thanks @bevansuits ! One thing though – I can’t figure out where to register for access to the videos on simply-eco.com. Any pointers?

Sorry, should have tagged @admin and @britta above.

I’m new at this myself, but I did stop in to All Seasons Garden Centre ( http://tinyurl.com/2djeakz ) today. They had a lot of materials and very knowledgeable staff. Prices looked pretty good. They seem to be fairly highly-recommended online. I’d be interested to hear how they stack up to the local competition though.

I suppose for the most part there isn’t such a thing as ”hydroponic materials”; there’s gardening/plumbing/aquarium/pond supplies, etc. If materials can be found more cheaply or more readily available in a standard box store, that would be better. But this place was the first place I found everything I would need for a setup all in one place. It was the only place I could find expanded clay or net pots at ALL. Everyone seems to be using expanded clay and net pots in hydroponics these days, but I wonder just how much advantage they offer over, say, gravel and plastic cups with holes poked in them.

Sorry for the late reply – you know how busy things can get.

Unfortunately I don’t have much by way of a web ”portfolio” I could show you. Most of the stuff I’ve done has been either personal websites or small business websites which I was not contracted to maintain after they were built, and have since gone away.

My own personal site is online, and you can check it out at http://canadrian.ca – not much there at the moment aside from aggregation of my social web presence plus my resume. I spent a LOT of time developing a social networking site at http://electricteaparty.net but I have taken it offline for the time being; while once fairly vibrant, the site has turned into a ghost town with the increasing popularity of Facebook. Once I sort out some content access issues, I’ll likely bring it back online.

Aside from my personal projects, I’ve worked on a number of projects for others. Aside from galleries and travel blogs for individuals, I have a few notable accomplishments. Perhaps foremost is my work on a team portal (including issue tracker, wiki, reporting functionality, etc.) while I was at IBM. I also built the original website for the Ilfracombe Town Council (in England), and a corporate site for a video game development firm called Snake Takes Studios, but unfortunately both website projects included no ongoing support contract and have since been replaced.

I think the best way to explore the advantages of Drupal would be for me to throw together a quick demo site (for free, of course). We could try importing a dump of the current site and see how it goes, or just pre-populate it with some example content for demonstration purposes. If this is something that the admin, Britta, etc. would be interested in, I’d be happy to do that.

Welcome! Phew, that was fast! New group members already! You hail from the Edmonton area I take it?