Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

these are some pictures of a bad infestation of spidermites.when i put the predataors in they cleaned them up in about two weeks.twoards the finish it looks like sharks herding salmon into a corner.

This is another shot ,the orange ones are the predators.

This is a mild infestation of white fly,when they are thick they are as close together as the three in the the middle.

When the encarsia wasp lays it's eggs in the white fly they look like this.The encarsia works much slower than the spidermite preditor but in both cases it pays to be on the ball and act at the first sign of a infestation.

Cool, thanks for the pics Don, great to hear the predators are working well for you...

Here is another one ,what you see in the in the top right hand corner is all the spidermites herded up trying to get away .I could make a video clip of it but I don't know how to get it on the forum.

This is how I dealt with my aphids problems:









Here are one of the offspring larvae that found its way to a rose bush on the other side of the yard:



Those were on my quince bush last year. This year my sweet cherry tree is infested with black cherry aphids and there are ladybugs/ladybug eggs all over it. I still ordered more ladybugs b/c I'm worried the larvae and ladybugs that landed on it this year won't deal with the infestation fast enough.

Hey MikeyM

Where did you pick up your ladybugs?

Thanks,
Thefishingangler

Last year I bought them from this place:
http://gardeningzone.com/index_130.html

Those are the ladybugs in the pics...

This year I picked some up some from planet natural.
http://www.planetnatural.com/site/ladybugs.html

The total cost seems to be a bit cheaper iirc from planetnatural.com vs gardeningzone although the "Free" shipping is kind of a joke at planetnatural.com... The 2 day shipping price is included in the price of the ladybugs on planet natural. Also, planet natural messed up a seed order that I made which they have rectified. In hind site I think I should have just gone back to ordering from gardeningzone.com. Planet Natural's website said that if I ordered on wednesday, my order would be shipped the following monday rather than that day to avoid having the bugs sitting in some warehouse over the weekend. I asked the customer support person (after mentioning that I had received the wrong seeds) and they told me my bugs would be shipped May 17th... ugh... I need them ASAP since my sweet cherry tree is infested with black cherry aphids and the local ladybugs that found my tree and laid eggs aren't laying enough!

I also ordered nematode Steinernema feltiae from gardeningzone.com to handle some fungus gnat infestation that I had in my yard after I started vermicomposting and it worked very well. This year nothing really "flies" out of the compost bin that I have! I also have 4x different kinds of raspberries growing in my yard out of containers and I haven't had any problems with raspberry crown borers but that may be b/c I am probably the only person in Queens NY growing raspberries out of buckets... =P
http://gardeningzone.com/product_info.php?products_id=173&osCsid=e4e3c9cba

WARNING; There are 2 things that I would NOT advise using in an aquaponics systems and that would be soap and oil!
Both of these ingredients may be harmful to fish!

Ditto...

[/quote]

WARNING; There are 2 things that I would NOT advise using in an aquaponics systems and that would be soap and oil!
Both of these ingredients may be harmful to fish![/quote]

Hmmm. Ivory liquid is apparently as close to natural as you can get. You're not putting it in the water, you're spraying it on the plants. I've used them in the garden and have no adverse effects (facial tic aside - Kidding).

Remember you are putting 1 tablespoon per into one litre of water. If you were to spray down all your plants (which I have) you go through a couple of ounces. I use olive oil as the oil.

Recognizing all that, do you think that a couple of ounces of insecticide (of 99%water, 1% solution), a couple of times per week, using relatively natural products in 200+ gallons of water is going to affect the fish?

Just a thought.

Thefishingangler

Ladybug eggs



Hover fly egg. It's the little white oval looking spot:



I missed the boat on taking a pic of the hover fly as it was laying the egg so here is another pic i took last year of what it actually looks like. It mimics a wasp.



as always you can click on the pic for a bigger image

Mike

Oh and here is the black cherry aphid infestation pic #2.



Seriously, my ladybug eggs can not hatch (or ladybug order from planetnatural) any sooner!!!! Planetnatural is really on my poop list for basically taking 2 weeks to fill my order... and messing up my order of 3 simple packs of seeds!!!

Holy.

That's alot of aphids.

I only ever got the green ones but, never that bad.

If you don't want to do the soap thing. I've read that you can spray them with some water with a bit of tobasco in it. It should dry them up and maybe give the ladybugs a chance to catch up.