Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

All of the fittings have been secured, and cycling begins today!!!

The stipulations for this project were as follows:

- Tiny 1-Bedroom apartment that had only 2 south-facing windows with decent lighting.
- Second Story apartment in an old building that probably can't support a ton of weight.
- Construct as much of the system as possible from random junk found in our storage unit.

Therefore the system had to be very small! So I found two appropriately sized plastic windowbox planters, and did the math to find that they could only support a 9.5-10.0 gallon fish tank. I happened to have 2x 5 Gallon Water totes from our camping gear. They were cannibalized to become a fish tank.

I then built a custom shelf for it all to sit on, out of 0.75" MDF, which was primed and painted white. This was a bit of a challenge as it had to fit around the Radiator under the window. Pipe fittings and such were installed, checked & double checked for leaks, and after a few test runs of the bell siphons, it is happily chugging away and letting the chlorine in the water off-gas for a few days. Then on Saturday will begin the ammonia cycling. Then will come the plants, and the future goldfish, Mr. Stinky.