If I may, I recommend starting with either an aquaponic system OR a windowfarm that uses store-bought hydroponic nutrients. Getting two ecosystems to be in a symbiotic relationship is a monumental task for a beginner. You can always add one system onto another. If you definitely want to start with aquaponics I would jump off of this site and join in one of the aquaponic forums. In general, the windowfarms project is not trying to expand scope to aquaponics right now because most apartment dwellers are not going to ALSO take on a fish tank. We are trying not to get into scope creep. We will probably continue to treat aquaponics as either very advanced or somewhat ”off-topic” for this site and will not promote it heavily here. Too much tweaking would need to be made to our how-tos and we simply cannot handle all the questions beginners have about this. Seriously, it’s not that we don’t love aquaponics (I’ve got a saltwater live rock system going!), it is just not appropriate for our community of largely beginner urban apartment dwelling vertical hydroponic food-growers. We gotta set priorities and boundaries or the community will be all over the place. Yeah?

The fact is that anyone can adapt to an aquaponically-nourished system fairly easily. Some of you may already have an aquarium sitting nearby, so it’s almost as simple as connecting a few tubes and ’voila’ ! (Notice I say almost.) The key is that with hydroponics you must add nutrients. In aquaponics, the fish provide the nutrients from their waste ammonia, you feed the fish. That can be commercial fish food or, for some species, table scraps. Look up ’pacu’, an edible cousin of the piranha that you can buy at PetSmart. They grow really fast.

Okay, granted…. For some of you this will be too much too soon. But the next time you run low on hydroponic nutrients and you have to trek across town and spend thirty bucks, you might be ready to make the stretch. Then, with fish doing the work, you can be assured that your window farm will be the absolute coolest of all.

SPECIAL FOR WINDOWFARMERS: Email me at bevan@accesstoaquaponics.com and I will forward you a free copy of my book The Aquaponics Guidebook, a $30 value. It’s a 54 page PDF full of links and tons of information to keep your creative minds working overtime.