Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi guys. Been ages since I've been here sorry. Left workforce to start a company then had a near death experience that threw a whole set of spanners into all available works...

Anyway, overnight my crop of spring onions have been infested with some tick like little bugs - hundreds of them. I gave them a spray with some dipel more because it was the only fish safe product I've even needed before, but it appears to have had little effect on them.

Can anyone offer an identification, which in turn I hope will lead to a more effective treatment?

Thanks in anticipation.

Pcal

Very interesting have not seen them before, are they eating or just nesting.
Sorry to hear about your experience hope it's all going well for you now

Dipel really only works for caterpillars, it doesn't work on most bugs.

It's really hard to see them clearly in your photo as they look like fuzzy black spots, can you get a good close-up of some that are dry?

A couple of them look to be beetle shaped. You could just try wiping them off with a rag.

Black aphids... They love the onion family, I've had plagues in the past on chives and spring onion plants..

Based on how poorly the affected plants look, I'm assuming there is some feeding going on. There are strawberry plants at the other end of this growbed, and they seem completely unaffected.

Had to borrow my wife's camera (she has the better one) so this photo is at the limit of our capabilities.

Earthbound seems confident in the diagnosis - is there a suggested treatment?

Thanks.

Parasitic wasps, or eco-oil, although the oil won't do the wasps much good. See the pic I recently posted on my first system thread of parasitized aphids to see what it does to them.

Wood vinegar, Spinosad, or Neem. All should work. be careful with Neem around the fish. All oils are not good for fish.
Also the biologicals mentioned as well as ladybugs and lacewings, both who love eating aphids.

Often wondered how plain old vegetable oil would work. I use that on yellow jacket nests with 100% results. Smothers them in seconds. I have not used it in aquaponics set up but would rather use something like that than toxins like neem.

Additionally, you want to make sure your beds are protected from ants which love to spread aphids around.

Oils are an issue. Neem, and azaderactin(sp) you use very low amounts. I would assume the rate for vegetable oil would be similar to horticultural oil, a much higher rate. A high rate of vegetable oil would be "toxic" to fish.

Eco oil is used at something like 10ml per litre, shaken and sprayed on to the aphids on the plants. It's just emulsified canola oil. I've used it plenty of times with no problem, however it will probably kill any parasitic wasp larvae too, if they are present.

yep black aphids
milk spray and /or jet them off with your garden hose

Milk controls aphids?? I've only heard of it for powdery mildew. My experience with washing them off is they simply crawl back on in a few hours.

While I was pondering over the growbed this morning, I noticed a single native wasp going absolutely bunta. It either had a really bad itch, or it was laying the foundations to be the progenitor of an entire colony of native wasps based in my spring onion patch...

Assuming the later, I guess there is a biological control game afoot and so I should rule out any oil based activities.

I took some pictures with my phone, but the resolution is a joke so I'll not even bother posting them. How long might I need to wait for the wasp's progeny to start chowing down on my aphid problem?

The parasitic wasps are only a few mm long, and when things are that small, they happen pretty fast... but I don't know exactly how long.

I think I waited too patiently for the wasps to do their thing.

I also tried all the "safe" alternatives that were offered to me - Made up a spray out of Chilli which was alleged to kill aphids on contact - but didn't seem to bother them any so far as I could see. Also tried a spray made out of garlic, which seemed to do more to attract blowflies than deter aphids.

I even tried manually wiping them off the spring onions with a cloth, but by then, there were just too many of them.

Eventually I ran up the white flag and just pulled out the entire spring onion crop trying to take as many of the little blighters with them as possible. Gave the ones that fell into the growbed a light spray of Eco-oil, and then replanted the bed with baby spinach.

Next time, I'll attack first and ask question afterwards...

Thanks for the suggestions.