My first small scale Aquaponics system

When we moved to a small apartment in West End, Brisbane and wanted to experience the city life a bit, I was missing the produce I used to get from our garden.

We didn't have much space and just a corner of sun on our balcony, and coming back from a long trip around the world with not much money left in our pockets, we needed to build a system from things we had around the house.

So we took 2 100L storage tubs we had no more use for, painted them from the outside, placed them on a shelf we found on Gumtree, and went to buy a small Aqua one pump, pipes, flood and drain fitting and clay balls.

It was very very easy to assemble! I just needed to drill 2 holes in the bottom of the tub, and the plastic shelf and connect the flood and drain fitting, put the clay balls in and my garden was ready for planting!!!

To start with I have planted all the herbs I use , this was for me the most valuable to grow due to their high supermarket price, and considering i used to buy at least 4 punnets of parsley & 2 coriander a week, growing them at home saved me $15 a week!

Then considering the system was very small I added my favorite veg- cherry tomatoes, eggplant, spinach and strawberry.

After the system was cycling for few weeks, we introduced 10 Jade perch.

 

The picture above was taken 2 months after planting the seedlings, so the growth rate was incredible!