Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I just started breeding fruit flies for my fish, but after seeing the ultimate vintage fly trap, I'm going to modify my methods to incorporate this design, and trap piles of fruit flies.

I'll post pics when I'm successful.

gnite all,

jeff c

P.s. So far I use McDonald's McCafe 20 ounce cups, with cut potato and fruit peels in the bottom, after 48 hours there are lots of fruit flies. I put a small piece of saran wrap on top and trap them all inside, get them out the next day after they've all died of suffocation and feed them to the fish.

I've been running a light over the FT for a while now. Winter was not that great but the rest of the year there are lots of insects that go into the water. The amount of pellets I was feeding them was cut in half. I also see a lot less insect damage to the plants.

What sort of light Duff ?

+1 on the type of light

And if you have a light, how do you keep the cover over the tank to keep the algae out?

i found a low wattage "pond light" at home depot...
i put it about 2" down in the water right by my growbed returns, which helped knock more bugs into the water..

I bought a few cheap solar lights from bunnings. Got them for $1 each and they attach to a AAA battery. I might rig it so i have a few batteries in a chain and i will be putting it into a water proof container.

I bought one of these for about $20 at bunnings, its a 10w submersible light made by aquapro

So, if bugs are attracted to ultraviolet light, would these underwater lights do the same thing as lights that are hanging down close to the water? I know they aren't attracted to LED lights. Wonder how the flourescent squiggly bulbs would work?

matty's light is pretty similar to the one i had, about 10 watts.. and bugs were attracted to it all summer.. when the junebugs made their yearly appearance (japanese beetles) the first morning i woke up and found 40 or 50 bugs floating around, figured the fish didn't like them, so scooped them out, the next day i saw just as many if not more, but didn't have time to scoop them.. the fish figured out that they were food that day, because when i got home there were just a few wings/shell parts floating around..never saw another junebug in the water for more than a couple minutes after that..

Your light was where? Inside the water pointing up, down, sideways?

i put my light about 2" down in the water, in one end of my oval tank, right between to drain outlets from barrel growbeds, and rigged it to point up..

this was one of mine...worked well, stunk really BAD .....kangaroo carcas, I think I used

Still would like to see a picture of this

I have probably 20-30 flys at my back door all the time. I just went to buy fly bait, found some organic one. (ground up prawn i think that i had to add water to) Dont know if i would risk feeding it to the fish though.