Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi all, can anyone tell my what this flying bug is?

My plants have started to look a bit sad and I've noticed quite a few of these guys on every plant I have, sometimes combined with a few tiny black caterpillars.

Also any methods or getting rid of them would be great!

Cheers

P.S I live in Adelaide if that helps with identification

Looks like a black soldier fly? If so they are harmless, they don't eat, just want to get it on before they die.

For the caterpillars, get some Dipel. It's bacteria based, and works a treat on caterpillars. It's a powder you mix up with water and spray on. They'll eat it, stop eating and die a few days later.

I use Dipel in an old salt shaker and sprinkle on leaves.

Boil up a bulb of garlic n use the water to spray plants when it's cooled

Not sure about that being a black soldier fly. The antennae don't look right and I don't see the white legs from that angle. Maybe yes, maybe no, got any other camera angles?

Thanks for the replies

I don't have any other photos at the moment and now its raining and they have all disappeared so I'll see if I can get another photo tomorrow and post it. cheers!

It looks like some sort of wasp, and it is probably there to lay eggs in the caterpillars. I'd like to see a side on view, but the antennae look like a wasp, which would be beneficial in controlling the caterpillars. They lay eggs in the host, which gets eaten from the inside.

If you spray with Dipel the caterpillars will die as posted by Colum above, but so will the beneficial wasp larvae.

Charlie- you are probably mostly wasting your Dipel by sprinkling it on, as the bacteria is activated by water.

How do you stop the spray from forming droplets and then rolling off the leaf ? I rarely had a drop remaining on the leaf so I also began to sprinkle it on dry.

Wasp or fly it is very hard to tell with that photo.

Either way it is not a bug

Yep, not a bad bug, probably on your side helping get rid of the baddies.

Spray it hard onto hydrophobic leaves, such as found on some brassicas, that seems to wet most of the surface. It that doesn't work, then perhaps a few drops of detergent/surfactant in the Dipel mix to make it stick. If a few drops end up in a thousand litres of water, it wont be a problem for the fish

I'd be cautious with the dipel & detergent mix. I tried this and it leaf burnt a stack of plants, leaves were dying everywhere.

I'm sure sure if I did something wrong, but I'm not going to try it again.

I dust on my dipel (as the directions say) and it works like a treat.

Colum, did you spray when it was hot?

smathew, you may have a different strain of it to us, the version I use is dormant in the packet and needs water to become active.

Been sprinkling it on for years with great success. Can't find anywhere on the packet that it needs water to activate it or make it work, only to mix with water to prepare it. But what does prepare mean? I'm pretty sure that a bacteria in a dry form in a packet won't become anything with the addition of water except wet dead bacteria. But I'm not chemistry legend..