Aquarium system, Building Shelves 1

I got this aquarium at good will, the top brace was not holding so I added some wood slats and a strap.

So starts the Aquarium Aquaponics system build.
I found these cool brackets that along with 2×4’s make for great shelving. However, my house is really small so building the shelves was quite the challenge. I managed to build them all by myself and I had to get pretty creative.

These brackets are great, just design the shelving and cut the 2x4s to the right lengths and screw everything together. Just remember to do it all in the right order so you don’t have to re-do too much of it.
This first set of shelves wasn’t too bad since the didn’t quite go wall to wall so I was able to lift the top up one end at a time then slide the shelves up to the right levels and secure it all. This first shelf will get the big aquarium on one end and the bucket grow beds will go in front of the window under a florescent light fixture.

The 5 buckets will be connected at the bottoms and drain by loop siphon into a sump bin under the shelf where the pump will be. So the Aquarium will probably hold about 30-35 gallons and the buckets will be about 25 gallons of media. I’m only intending 3-5 fish for breeding in this system so hopefully the 25 gallons of flood and drain media will be able to keep the water nice for a few breeding tilapia.
The big aquarium has a hole in the bottom already but I worry that it isn’t big enough.



The next set of shelving will hold the little aquarium and possible additional Aquaponics plant bed space.
Building this next set of shelves got trickier as this set is wall to wall and the previous set of shelves is already in the way of the end legs. So I started laying things out upside down and then by crawling in and out of the closet I managed to get the one side screwed together. I’ll just have to add the far legs after it’s standing.

So once I got it built, how the heck was I going to stand it up? Can’t just put it feet against the wall and walk it up, 1-because the ceiling fan would get in the way and 2-it’s too wide and the other set of shelving is already in place. So I have to stand it up with the top basically in place while walking the bottom in under it. I’m only just over 5′ 1″ tall and definitely not big enough to work harder so I’m gonna have to figure out some method of working smarter here. Remember that I’m all by my lonesome on this project as the cook was away. Tune in tomorrow for the next installment of the Aquaponics Aquarium Shelf build to find out how I managed to stand the shelves up.
For all those out there who don’t already know this, Aquaponics is addictive so I expect to hear you are all back tomorrow to see the conclusion.