Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi all,

I live in Country NSW, Australia and I have 2 Aquaponic systems running one small one 250 l which is running now for a year and a 2000l system running for about 6 month . Both are under cover (Greenhouse). The problem I have is pests giving my plans a real hammering and I can not get on top of it. I tried predatory insects and that worked initially and home made sprays don't have much effect at all and I am getting desperate .

I am thinking of using a Ultrasonic fogging unit to apply Neem based pesticide. My thinking behind this that using fog instead of spray i will use a lot less of the pesticide and because of being fog run off will be minimal. My research indicates the the fog actually does not condense and settle on the plants or growing media.

So hear is my question. Has anyone used ultrasonic foggers for applying pesticides in AQ system and what where the results.

Any feed back is greatly appriciated

Cheers Franz

I think this would probably work pretty well because fog would get the treatment to the underside of the leaves better than some application methods but I haven't tried one. I know that foggers are commonly used in the greenhouse trade but the ones I've seen were the types you'd carry that looked a bit like a leaf blower or like these from Jaybird Manufacturing that you can hang from the ceiling in a greenhouse - http://www.jaybird-mfg.com/products/turbo-xe-series/turbo-xe-60-hz/. They have some interesting videos of their units in operation.

Hi sotty435,
Thanks for your reply and the links. the foggers in the videos are essentially what I had in mind with some minor differences. I am thinking of foggers that can be placed directly under the plants so the fog raises up rather than fill the whole greenhouse with fog.

Sounds interesting. With any of these machines the fog you generate will spread out and dissipate to the point that you can't see it (larger droplets fall back faster) - if there is any breeze at all, it probably won't matter which direction the fog comes out of the machine. You may or may not reduce the amount of pesticide you use, you might just have the same amount of pesticide in a smaller volume of liquid (and less runoff because of it). This might help - http://www.gpnmag.com/article/fogging-effective-pest-management/

Thanks again for your help much appreciated. Just ordered the parts to build the fogger, when I got it working I post a picture or two.