Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Not great photos.

First one is looking up the ramp to the exit.

Second is looking down the ramp at the frass and fresh food. The BSFL are well hidden.

Third shows the PVC capture gear... untested as yet.

Last shows the whole setup from the side

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The new system works.

But about 1/3 of this morning's self-harvest were mature and went in to the freezer.

It's much dryer in the new system. Maybe humidity is the key to getting the softer ones to self-harvest.

Will experiment and update in a couple of weeks when back from a work trip.

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Thanks heaps Dave for then info, very cool, now I have a project.

Let us know how you go... I reckon there are heaps of people on this forum who would be very interested... whether for financial or environmental reasons.

sitting on a plane with wifi... time to research... I found https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... _resources which indicates that humidity is important... at least to some level. I imagine that could be an issue in the Riverina.

The paper indicates that BSFL hatching is more successful and development quicker with higher humidity... but not why they should self-harvest prematurely.

high humidity - not a problem in Townsville so thats one variable taken care of.

If you are thinking of starting a new system make sure the ants cant get into it.That's what happened to my first one .First it was the meat ants which if you don't know ,they are quite a large ant. then when I had a closer look there were thousands of very tiny ants as well ,I think they ate the eggs .So now I am starting another one on a table with the legs in tins of water.

ants are definitely a nuisance especially when they are farming the aphids.
Getting rid of them is not an easy proposition.
The slightest route to the beds/plants is soon utilised for entry.
Just one plant touching the fence or elsewhere is sufficient to get the nest started.

@dbird thanks for the tip re: ants, we used to use the method of the legs standing in water when air drying fruit. I was thinking of putting mine in one of the shallow water troughs for the time being.

@dangerous dave thanks for the additional info mate. Geez last time i was on a plane they looked funny at me when I pulled my phone out, thought the air Marshalls were gonna crash tackle me . Now there is wifi .

I'll have a crack this week coming hopefully, but my projects do tend to take bit to get started. I assume you mean self harvest as in crawl out soft?

Exactly. Mine have been self harvesting while still soft and therefore snapped up by the fish. But they apparently usually only do this when they're hard and ready to find a dry spot to pupate


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Maybe your on to something with the high humidity, escaping to harden?

Just thinking out loud here.
Use a black vessel containing water placed in the full sun.
This will produce a high humidity atmosphere in side that could be piped into the BSF breeding tank.
or this maybe.
https://www.harveynorman.com.au/beurer- ... ifier.html

Then experimentation to find the amount and when to apply.

I had a mate who used a humidifier, a bit like the commercial one you linked above, to control humidity in an old fridge he was using to grow his koji spores and then to make various foods (also see a recent post by Bullwinklell about Koji if interested). We rigged it up to a sensor/switch controller to keep the humidity fairly constant... it worked well. But you probably wouldn't need to have that level of control in our case.

But my high humidity was achieved simply by having enough moist food and the plastic crate being well sealed. The weather was a bit humid at the time, but nothing like FNQ!

Will be interesting to see if the new setup - with better drainage and ventilation, won't work as well (ie not produce the soft self-harvesters).

Good and bad news on the BSFL front

My BSF farm was fairly dry and inactive when I got back from my trip... still some BSFL in there but not doing much... no doubt because nobody fed them while I was away. Anyway, have been feeding them and it's starting to produce larvae again. The new design works well.

The bad news first... only mature (hard and black) BSFL are self harvesting. I don't know if it's the weather. Or more likely that the new design is much better drained and also allows some air flow. I might be right of the mark with the humidity hypothesis anyway!

The good news is that my jade perch are eating the mature ones. I was previously cutting them in half with a pair of secateurs and they would go for those. But last couple of days, before feeding them anything else, I've presented them with the mature BSFL and they're taking them. It might help that they know they're about to be fed when I open the hatch on the tank... for a long time, they've taken lettuce and other leafy greens from my hand. And they're very hungry all the time. So they don't spit out the BSFL like they used to.

with luck, they'll get a taste for them and eat more and more going forward. Plan is to eventually mix them in with the pellets. Right now, I think they'll go for the pellets rather than the BSFL if they have an option.

Haven't given up on getting the white immature ones to self harvest again!

Only good thing about social isolation is more time for all of my projects...

The BSFL farm is well established now... very active colony of larvae despite colder weather. I get an occasional self-harvested immature BSFL (ie white, soft and what fish like). I'm now convinced that it does relate to higher humidity.

But I've mostly been cutting the hard ones in half to get the jade perch to eat them. I did find that, if they were hungry enough, I would only need to cut a few in half and they'd get excited enough that they'd eat most of the whole hard ones.

Last couple of days, I've been able to scoop up handfuls of immature BSFL straight from the farm... there's masses of them just under the surface. There's far more BSFL than frass and it's easy to remove the large bits of frass before a quick wash and then they go straight in to the tank. Easy

Not quite as easy as getting them to self harvest but pretty close.

Added bonus is that they seem quite keen on cane toads