Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Morning all.

Been reading the forum for several months now, and the boss finally gave me permission to use a bit of her apartment to put up an itty bitty AP system. So the south-facing window in our office will shortly be obscured with whatever I can shoehorn in.

Currently we're living in a third-floor apartment in the hills of Colorado in the US, so gardening opportunities are somewhat limited, to say the least. I think there might be enough sun through one window to allow some growth year round with minimal additional lighting, so I'm crossing my fingers on that count.

Anyway, here's the starting components for an itty bitty system: 10 gal aquarium, a few 5-gal buckets, and several rubbermaid containers of varying sizes. (Plus lumber and hardware from various other projects.)

We'll be running to Denver in search of further components (and that whole holiday thing) round the end of the week, so here's hoping I might get the system hardware in place by the end of the year.

Thanks for all the great information everyone's provided here, and curse you all for introducing another sucker to yet another hobby for which time is lacking!

Cheers!
Chris

hey Chris, welcome to our madness
You'll find quite a few tiny systems on here. Especially look at the top of the Member's Systems list for the small system summaries.
Have fun with it and drive safely over the holidays

Welcome BG!

For a start maybe just pump water up to one of the buckets and let it flow right back down, pump running from a timer occasionally. I have an aquarium in the basement set up that way and it works and is easy. Flood and drain is more desirable but you can't get simpler than just two containers.

viewtopic.php?p=161466#p161466

Also, see Jay's system that will give you lots of ideas:
viewtopic.php?t=1348

Also, this situation may look like the farm fountain too (I'm thinking their first system in front of the sliding doors):
http://www.farmfountain.com/

Actually I guess one container is simpler.

None of Jay's pictures show up in his old thread, here is a link that shows the system:
http://brainright.com/projects/aquaponics.aspx

Ballistic gourd...
Interesting nick... perhaps you could explain how it fits into apartment living?
**Health warning** BG's response could be scary :-)

@ Jaymie

Thanks for the welcome and the good wishes...of course it finally started snowing right before this month's drive. Bleah!

@ Dave

Simplicity? I think I remember hearing that term somewhere before. Can't say that I remember ever being satisfied with a simple system, when a more interesting one can be contrived

@ KP

Well, the hobby that led to that nickname has been somewhat limited of late. Most of my comrades in insanity no longer live nearby, and my shop away from home (aka my dad's) is now two hours away.
Although, my wife conned her boss into letting her honor's students build a trebuchet for a competition this year.
The best part of that story? She's an english teacher.

a trebuchet? how cool is that! how big?

Welcome.

trebuchet, nice. Can't build one here because of all the houses around us.

A trebuchet would remove said houses

Too much temptation. And no fun to build a small one. Like the ones that can throw cars.

Mythbusters did one

Nah, you don't want one that'll throw cars...but cars do make great counterweights! The last one was a little one...only about 4 m tall and a little underpowered. Also...houses aren't quite as much of a problem as you think, you just have to make sure you can hook up your trailer and haul off in a hurry sometimes.