Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Your system looks amazing! Im green with envy.

All home grown, and all AP produce apart from the thyme- Tomato and Srping Onion sauce ingredients




January was a bit cooler than normal, with lots of cloud and rain, so the AP water stayed relatively cool.



Thanks Rue

Think its all down to the Rue - have you got some in your GBs?

Trout taste test after over 13 months in the deep freeze... Yum!

All home-grown ingredients other than the rice. Sauce is the tomato and spring onion sauce I made the other day.

The marked reduction in water temperature at the end of January, which has continued this month with a decline since 31st Jan, has made the Murray Cod go into diet mode. As previously observed, below about 20C they eat significantly less than when it is above that, so if I'm going to keep them growing at a good rate, it is clear I will need supplementary heating.
System 2 is using all (and more) available money for the next couple of months so I'll just use some 25mm poly pipe, which I already have, coiled on the ground and circulate water through it to get a few kW of heating happening.
System 2's 9500l fish tank arrives on the weekend.

Fairly typical February weather for the first half of the month, although a bit short on rain so far, and the Murray Cod continue to eat lots of ox heart, up to 150g per day. At least one of them is big enough to harvest, but I don't see it/them very often, as they almost always stay out of sight on the far side of the FT. Most of them are still on the small side of 25cm, but I think are generally large enough to not become lunch for the biggest few now. I'll wait until all of them are large enough for harvest before I start, that will greatly improve my chances of catching a fish of suitable size first go

I have had a few looks for Green Lacewings recently, but have not spotted a single one, since releasing 4 containers of them into the GH about 5 weeks ago. Blowed if I know what happened to them... maybe the ants ate them all. There are still a lot of White Flies, although perhaps not quite as many as a month ago.



The small bump in water temperature on 7/2 was when I managed to overflow the ST (actually emptied 4000+ litres from the house pressure tank) when topping up - a 50%+ water change! I did manage to salvage nearly 2/3 of the water though, by running the pump continuously to hold a fair bit of water in the GBs whilst I syphoned out the excess from the ST into a 3000l tank, which only overflows slowly past the SLO inlet. I plan to pump all that water into the new system sometiime soon. The fish didn't seem to mind- one advantage of having my system water not too far off the tank water parameters of temp, pH etc.

The larvae are really hard to spot.

I was taking some close up photos and it wasn't until I was looking at the photos on the big screen that I saw the larvae

I could see them in the containers when I bought them, but there should be plenty of adults around by now.

The adults will be around but they can be very hard to track down. You will also find that they are likely to come in waves.

I love lacewings for aphids, but think the wasps do much better on white fly. I've tried both and the ladybugs that specialize in white fly, and the wasps have done the best job.

How did you know which ones were responsible for what?

I watch the lacewings, beetles, and wasps. They all predate the white fly, but the Encarsia formosa are the ones that seem to be most effective, and perhaps most important, stay around and continue to breed and control. I have found no evidence of the beetles in the last 6 weeks, and only a few lacewings, while the wasps are still powering along with almost every leaf with white-fly larvae showing some parasitized.

I have seen evidence of parasitic wasps doing their thing on the White Fly larvae for quite a while, but they cant seem to keep up. I think this will be the last time I grow Peruvian Ground Apple in the greenhouse- I only have White Fly problems when that is growing in there. I'll try it outside in the new system next spring.

I have white fly problem with my hibiscus in the indoor garden. They are a magnet for them.
I finally stripped them of all their leaves and clean up the ground of dead leaves.
The larva survive in the dead leaves on the ground and so the wf have a easy comeback once the Hibiscus develops leaves again.
They are nasty suckers

I've made a new video of the trout feeding on 60g of ox heart this morning, top of the page here, in 2 sizes for download: http://gunagulla.com

Again taken @ 1/4 speed slow motion, which is the only way to get a decent view of the fish, since they are so fast.