Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I would love to start an ongoing thread for those of us in southern Africa... SA, Bots, Zim. What works and what doesn't in our climate. Fish, Plants, Pests etc. NO AUSSIES ALLOWED ON THIS THREAD!!! J/K


MM

Missionaryman... have a look through "Synaptoman"'s system... or read his blog...

will do

...continued from Sparkles "hijack" About the winters... Rarely gets below zero here but will cool the water temp down. I like synaptoman's idea for a greenhouse just for the fish tank. I have two IBC tanks and will be making a portable GH out of pvc and clear plastic to warm up the winter water to as close to optimum as possible.

veg wise i have grown pretty much all the vegetables with success with the exception of strawberries.

Fish wise trout do excellently in the cape but not so much the tilapia due to the cold. I am thinking of carp and bluegill and possibly yellow fish if I can find some for the warmer season. I wish we had some barramundi here and yabbies would be great too but cant find them here. I want to try breeding some crabs to use for trout food. I am also trying to get a viable mosquito fish culture going to feed to the trout with some minor success.

White fly are a pest in my greenhouse on the tomatoes. not sure what to spray. Dippel has been mentioned but i am not sure we get it here.

BF have you tried some of the aquaponics safe remidies yet like flour and salt mixture, garlic and oil, hot pepper juice???


mm

For whiteflys you might make yellow sticky cards to catch them. Neem or organocide are supposed to work against whitefly but they are both oils that I wouldn't be all that comfortable using around a fish tank. Neem is really safe for people but it can affect beneficial insects as well as the bad ones and the whole oil thing with fish means you gotta be really careful.

Good idea TCLynx. Is yellow the color for white flies??? Are certain colors good for other pests. BF I'm sure you have Rat-X down there in SA. Easy enough to make the stickey traps out of that. I'll have to keep that in mind. Off the subject TCLynx but i believe you are the peePonics expert... I'm doing a fishless cycle now. Used 6 ltrs of aged urine for 1000ltr of water...Too much??? it's been about 5 days and I havent gotten any nitrate or nitrite reedings. Started with three liters then today put another three in. thoughts???


MM
P.S. TCLynx It's nice to chat with a fellow American where i can spell liter and color the correct way...he he he

Hey BF doesn't your green house keep the water warm enough in the winter to let your tilapia grow well???

I have build my own GH. 2.6 x 2 out of water pipe and white roof plastic. Only the plastic is torn by the now. But same tape could fix it. Was looking into proper GH plastic. I'm running the circulating pump on solar just to make sure (ESKOM..). I only circulate the water during the day. At night its still to cold (0-6). My fishtank is in the garage. Quite some piping I had to do..