Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Is this what is meant by companion planting













So much for the Pak Choy! Let's hope the Egg Plants make it through the onslaught!

p.s. These guys were growing in a normal garedn bed that is fed from my Koi pond.

What should I do, bite the bullet and use chemicals or does anyone else have a better way to get rid the blasted Cabbage Butterfly gruds?

Cheers
VM

BT..... Thuricide or Dipel dust. It is a bacterial control for the leaf eating caterpillars. They have to eat a little bit of it and then it gives them a belly ache, they quit eating and die in a few days. If used carefully, it seems to be quite safe for use around AP systems even.

Beat me to the post TCL ...

+1 to Dipel... a Yates product... available from Bunnings....

While you're there... pickup...

A 25kg bag of Sunray Pool Salt... in case you need to salt

A 500gm jar of EcoRose (Potassium BiCarbonate)... in case you need to buffer and/or add Potassium... also makes a good foliar spray for powdery mildrew

A packet of Chelated Iron (Yates) .... in case you need to add iron...

A 5L container of Diggers Hydrochloric Acid... in case you need to adjust your pH

A small bag of Gypsum... in case you need to adjust hardness

A bag of shell grit... in case you need a long term slow release buffer.. without Potassium

A bottle of Maxicrop (with or without Iron)... or Seasol.... just in case... a good plant tonic... either as a foliar spray... or direct to the tank/sump...

Anything else..... hummm....

Well it's Bunnings... I'm sure you'll find other things you hadn't even thought of....

feed them to the fish!!

Thanks Mate! Looks like I better win Oz Lotto to cover the bill

ps. I have tried feeding them to the Koi and they wont touch them [too bloody spoilt probably!]

Cheers Guys
VM

I would probably shorten that list quite a lot since I think you already have a good handle on certain parts of the fish keeping side of things.
The Dipel of course since that is your immediate problem.
The maxi crop or seasol and Iron are probably a good idea though depending on the amount of Iron in your source water. The other pH and water/fish keeping stuff you probably know just as much or more than many of us about those things.

Dipel worked well for me , but then I didnt get the sick pleasure of dropping fat little green catarpillars into a swarm of hungry trout one by one

for any type of catapillar, I read on a organic pest control website that if you sprinkle regular flour on the plants they eat it and it dries them out from the inside..

jT

TCLynx - yes I have a reasonable handle on that side of things.

Boris01 - I am getting some Dipel today

JT - I fed that lot to the Rainbowfish and they had to fight the Archers for them

VM

My trout wont eat anything except pellets and the odd worm, they ignored green bugs and crickets oh yeah and they ignored the euro wasp that fell in too.

my goldies have learnt to like caterpillars over the last year or so.

...and they spit bees out too

Those caterpillars did a great job at cleaning that plant.

Yeah Cabbage moths will decimate the pant, and no matter how may you kill, mature grubs appear the same afternoon, like they hide in the gravel or something.

my mum told me to try putting egg shells around the plants you want to protect from cabbage moths, aparrently it looks like their is already a moth there so they go else where,

havent tried it myself, i went for the twice a day inspection and quish all the eggs i could find on both sides of the leaves then feed the cattlerpillas to the fish method ( my silvers had no probs with having a go at them ), and now i think the heat has been keeping them under controll

CHeers
pete