DIY Homemade Hydroponics Basket Pot

I decided to try setting up a bit of hydroponics tonight. Actually, it’s aquaponics, because it’s based off of my fish tank.
I am having a bit of algae problems on the 75 gallon tank. I am hoping that growing some basil out of the tank will help soak up some of the nutrients and slow the algae growth.
I don’t have one of those fancy pots that they use in hydroponics, so I decided to make one of my own. I have a bit of plastic grid that is used for that hook & latch projects. I rolled a bit of it up, and sewed it together with fishing line.

I cut out the base, making it into a circle. This took a bit of trial and error, and it’s a bit small.

To hold the pot I made a support span that the pot would sit in. I sewed two boxes together to force the curves in the supports.

Here you can see base in the pot and the assembled span.

This stuff is kinda handy to make things out of like this.

The pot sewed into the span. You can seen I needed to use a tweezers to get the knots tied in the fishing line. This is designed to hold the bottom of the pot in the water on my microtank. Note the notches in the bottom of the span.

Here you can see the empty pot sitting on my microtank. Yeah, the same tank that has given me so much grief with overflowing and leaking. The notches hold the pot onto the tank without fear of tipping (in theory).

Here is an LED lamp I picked up after Christmas for $10 on clearance at Menards. I am hoping that by adjusting the lamp very close to the plants, they will get enough light. I planted Basil seeds in the pot. I have a bit of rock in the bottom, then a lot of perlite, then a bit of rock on top to hold the perlite down.