I filled my 10 gallon fish tank with 2 gallons of tap water, put in the aquarium heater and a small aquarium (80 gallon per hour) submersible pump. I used a thin plastic piece (was originally intended to be a plastic cutting board) to create a trough that the water could flow down. I used some plastic tubing to direct the water from the pump to the trough. I had planned to use two troughs which is why you see the Y splitter in the tubing, however I did not have enough seeds, and thought I would test one trough out first, especially given some worries I had about the flow rate of the small pump I was using. The trough is supported by red plastic cups and the plastic tubing is fastened to the trough with twist ties.
Working in a lab we have these thin plastic cards with different whole sizes in them that are trashed after the pipette tips they hold are all used up. I cut some of the orange ones up to use as water baffles in between each row of cups.
I then cut up some plastic cups and cut slits in their bottoms so that water can flow through. I filled the cups up with perlite and added some seeds. Some of you may recognize the little brown cups, these are seed pods from an old Aerogarden kit I had. The other 6 pods can some other herb seeds. I put the top on the tank and turned its lights on! As soon as the cups were put in the water flow the perlite immediately soaked up a bunch of water. Finally I added 4 teaspoons of liquid fertilizer to the tank. (2 teaspoons per gallon was the recommendation on the bottle)
Here is a short movie showing the flow rate of the pump I am using.
Hopefully I will have some pictures of sprouting plants in a week or two!
