If you can’t find the frame at IKEA, ask around to see if friends have a spare one, or make a request on a site like Freecycle.
Use a bypass ball-valve on this system. This item diverts some of the water from the pump straight back into the fish tank. This lets you control the amount of water going into the growbed, and the diverted water also creates some water movement in the fish tank, as well as providing additional aeration. In this tutorial, 13mm PVC pipes were used throughout. Initially, it’s recommended that you too start with the growbed and the siphon used here.
This whole piece is called the standpipe and this is how the water will exit the growbed. You want the overall height to be about 1 inch (2. 5cm) under the top of your growbed media; thus, you will need to cut the pipe down so that it is the right height for you. At this point, let the silicon dry if you have used it.
In the picture below you can see the small 600 lph (litres per hour) pump with a small piece of 13mm pipe coming from it. This then has a T-Bar attached and then the 13mm pipe continues up to the 90-degree elbow at the top, which empties the water into the growbed. Coming off the second part of the T-Bar is a simple ball-valve that controls the flow of water that is diverted back into the fish tank.
