Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Sorry to hear about what happened.

Helomech - I don't think it was his pump but that's still a good idea. Pretty sure it was just the hose that was left with one end in the tank after topping up from the faucet and this siphoned the water out.

bummer East, an easy mistake to make.

Yea wasnt the pumps, was what scotty said. The other end of the hose was just at lower elevation so it slowly siphoned it all out. Oh well it happens.

I will pick some of that up Helo thanks for the tip

Oh yeah, true. My mistake.

I always use my pumps to move water around.

Well system is starting to make a little bit of recovery. I am going to start some seeds to replace tomatoes and few other things. Pretty soon will attempt to get the towers back up and running and clear out all the dead loss.

Need to plant some stuff to suck up all these nitrates. These little tilapia eat like crazy, every time I walk by the tank they explode the surface





Lemons are still going strong



I couldnt find any DE at tractor supply, so going to have to order some. This is the main problem I have right now is these guys are every where and I for the life of me cant find where they are coming from. I have treated every bed outside of green house and searched every where in green house. Any ideas on what to do?

Also with new pumps been having problems with siphons so everything is constant flood for the time being

Carpenter ants usually feed on sweets. They are "herding" aphids, whitefly, or both. Get rid of the pest, you will get rid of the ant. They will also protect them from beneficials that would like to eat their food source..ladybugs, lacewings, mantids, etc. I like Neem for whitefly and Spinosad for aphids. be careful with Neem and only apply to plants, being careful to limit GB exposure and nothing in FT. Tilapia are very hardy, but you still don't want it in the tank. You could also try baiting the ants away from the GB, but that may not be to effective.

Thanks Chris, I release ladybugs once a month and they wipe out the aphids. The ants leave for a short period of time but return as always.

I have been thinking about the spinosad, just didnt know if it was really safe with the fish

i have been using diatomaceous earth on my outdoor system, it seems to help slow the aphids down enough that the plants can outgrow the damage

Cotton where are you getting yours from?

Ants also farm scale insects so you may want to check your citrus if any are getting over there.

So far nothing on the citrus, hopefully they never do

I use these little traps with adhesive strips on them that I stick here and there (they look like cockroach traps) where the ants travel along as well as a sticky liquid sold under the 'ant rid' brand.

I had a lot of aphid problems and getting rid of the ants was important because they carry them down to the roots in the beds where you can't spray them.

I followed the ant trail back to the nest, and gave them several doses of ant rid (I'm not sure what your equivilant is, but they eat it, take it back to the nest, and kill off the rest of the nest). It took a few weeks, but I wiped them all out.

The diatomaceous earth only kills the ones that walk over the dust, and is useless once it rains.

I think new lots of ants take up the empty nest, but the ant rid works on them too.

I got mine from tractor supply too. A 10 or 15lb bag is like 10$


Remember it is used in livestock feed as an anticaking agent and that is probably thefeed section, not the pesticide section.

Your local feed store probably carries it and pool supply places may carry it as a filtration media. If you go that route just make sure it's just DE and nothing else.