Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

If one is really careful that the treatments are only going onto the plant leaves and not dripping into the beds or over spraying into the water, then exposure between the fish and the treatments will be minimal along with the large amount of water which is why people probably get away with using home treatments on plants as well since garlic also contains natural oils.

Fish foods contain oils too. It is all about type and concentration.

With anything you might use around your system, be careful. It is not the occasionally treated leaf that will kill all your fish, it is the bottle getting dropped or spilled that might.

At the moment I'm experiencing some unexplained fish deaths in my large system. I've lost 7 so far with several more not looking so good. Water quality (ammonia, nitrite, and pH all good and nitrates a bit high at 100) doesn't seem to be the cause. However, some one sprayed a wasp nest not far from my system about 3 weeks ago. I just got home from a week away and found 7 floating fish. Some had obviously been dead a while and others only just dead (were sort of floating on the bottom, one of which was actually still alive but I put it out of it's misery.) Gill on one or both sides looked wrong. Not sure it was the spray that did it, I may never know what caused it.

I have been lucky to find the two treatments on the left,I have only tried the garlic spray but it works very well,first step I controlled the ants,then spray with the garlic spray on my aphid problem and they cleared up. Iam hoping a combination of the two will help with the other ups as well. I hope you can see the contents on the labels,tobacco who would have thought ?

Grits is a Native American corn-based food common in Southern United States, consisting of coarsely ground corn.

Has anybody tried putting "fake white cabbage moth" like scare crows in the GB?

I have been told that if you make plastic or paper moth cut outs and stick them in your garden at less than 1m apart
the cabbage moth being territorial will move on?

I tried putting down egg shell pieces - white side up. but over time the plants grew and covered them up and they got an algal green tinge to them. Think its better to go with white bits of plastic on fishing line!

Saying that though I don't recall having too many caterpillars since... and the system in the backyard has got loads of the little buggas (and no eggshells!)

About once a year I get mealy worms (white fungus looking bugs) on some of my tomato and pepper plants. As soon as the plant gets it I pull it and throw it away.

Any safe remedies?

Mealy worms are a soft bodied scale insect which should be treatable by many things including
Aerated Worm Casting Tea
Botaniguard
SucraShield

Or in a very mild case, simply use some cotton swabs and rubbing alcohol to wipe them off the plants

Thanks - If I see them this year I'll try those

I expect the Botaniguard and SucraShield are things you would have to special order. I've gotten them off Amazon before.

anybody else in Perth inundated with little moths, they are diamond back moths I think?
been spraying dipel on them every couple of days without seeming to affect them.

is there Any other methods to control them?

hi slowboat, they are real bad this time of year. i use dipel but also use spinosad to control them. this is one pest that has developed resistance to dipel so using other control methods is important. however the lack of sucess with dipel is possibly due to the fact that the larvae are small and live on the underside of the leaf and usually form tunnels in the leaf, these atributes protect the pest from the dipel. i use both dipel and spinosad altenatively and make sure i get the underneath of the leaf. one of the benefits of spinosad is that it is water fast after 6 hours. be careful getting spinosad on the grow beds and in the water as certain levels can have an adverse affect on the fish. in my view if you apply carefully and monitor how much you use you should be ok.

Yes, be very careful with the spinosad since it doesn't actually require that much to be toxic to certain types of fish.

Yea moths with a boaring or tunneling larval stage are often protected from the dipel since for dipel to be effective the caterpillar or larva has to eat some of it off the surface of the leaves.

Another product to look for (still have to be careful using it in aquaponics but doesn't seem quite as toxic to fish as the spinosad) is AzaMax. It is an extracted ingredient from neem oil that seems to have some systemic effect and is antifeedant to many pests.

For most of my caterpillar problems the Dipel seems more effective but I dip my seedlings in the AzaMax mixture before planting them out into the system which seems to give them a week or two of resistance to many pest problems while they are still so young and tender. I don't think I've been seeding any heavy attacks on my seedlings for 2 weeks after planting them out, it is normally the older lettuce I'm seeing the caterpillars attack. I'm hoping this will provide some help when we get to the ants farming aphids time of year here.

You have grey aphids and not mealy worms (mealworms)
Look at aphids control methods instead

http://bugguide.net/node/view/757441

I've never heard of these being called mealy worms.

Mealybugs -
http://www.cottoncrc.org.au/industry/Publications/Pests_and_Beneficials/Solenopsis_Mealybug_Outbreak_2010/Mealybug_IPM_Guidelines

There is something called a mealworm though - http://mealwormstore.com/mealworm_info.php

Could also be Grey Aphid but can't blow the picture up enough to tell.

Yep.. big difference between mealy bugs... and meal worms...

Mealy bugs aren't good... meal worms are good...