The Bug Battle

[Sylvia Bernstein]

How are people tackling the bugs that find our systems?  I've been using a combination of beneficial insects (mainly ladybugs) and spraying with insecticidal soap when I have to...but I worry about the effect that using too much of that might have on the fish.  If a plant is pretty small (lettuces, greens, beans, peppers) and is pretty bug infested I'll take it out of the media and let it soak in the fish tank for about 15 minutes. the bugs drown, and the fish seem to love them.

I know some people use neem oil with success.  What are the downsides?  What else do you guys use?

Also, my most buggy plants are salad greens and peppers.  They've stayed totally off my herbs, broccoli, and tomatoes.  What have other's experience been with this?  Any hypothesis as to why?  Travis thinks it has something to do with nitrogen levels...

[TCLynx]

Heck, the silica may actually be beneficial to the plants and so far as I know, it hasn't hurt any fish.

[Rebecca B]

I found a simple recipe to deal with aphids and other soft bodied bugs, and another one to attract good bugs.

Here are recipes you can make at home to attract the good guys to your garden. This mix is enjoyed by adult lacewings, ladybugs, parasitic wasps and others.

• Good Bug Chow 
  Mix all the following ingredients together in a glass or plastic container:
  2/3 cup of warm water
  4 tablespoons of brewer's yeast
  2 teaspoons of honey
  1/2 cup of sugar
  
  To use: Take 2 tablespoons of the mix and dilute it in 1 quart of lukewarm water. Use this solution to spray on plants in the spring and early part of summer. Remember don't spray plants when temperatures are over 80F. Store the mixture in a sealed container in the refrigerator so it won't go rancid. It will keep for 7-10 days. The sugar in it is actually good for your plants.
  
• Sugar-Water Spray
  Mix together very thoroughly these ingredients:
  32 ounces of warm water
  5 ounces of white sugar
  
  Apply as needed to your plants when aphids and other soft bodied are a nuisance.
  Research done at Utah State University indicates that spraying this sugar-water solution in the center of an alfalfa field increased the ladybug population in one to two days by 200% to 1300%.

[TCLynx]

those sound like great recipes Rebecca!!!!  Nothing in them that is dangerous to fish or bio-filter bacteria and attracting more good bugs is great.

[Sahib Punjabi]

Thanks :-)

 

I will certainly try these in early morning...Temps here in Central Florida are now getting to mid 80's in mid day...and they were at freezing a month back...crazy!

 

God bless,
Rebecca Branham said:

I found a simple recipe to deal with aphids and other soft bodied bugs, and another one to attract good bugs.

Here are recipes you can make at home to attract the good guys to your garden. This mix is enjoyed by adult lacewings, ladybugs, parasitic wasps and others.

• Good Bug Chow 
  Mix all the following ingredients together in a glass or plastic container:
  2/3 cup of warm water
  4 tablespoons of brewer's yeast
  2 teaspoons of honey
  1/2 cup of sugar
  
  To use: Take 2 tablespoons of the mix and dilute it in 1 quart of lukewarm water. Use this solution to spray on plants in the spring and early part of summer. Remember don't spray plants when temperatures are over 80F. Store the mixture in a sealed container in the refrigerator so it won't go rancid. It will keep for 7-10 days. The sugar in it is actually good for your plants.
  
• Sugar-Water Spray
  Mix together very thoroughly these ingredients:
  32 ounces of warm water
  5 ounces of white sugar
  
  Apply as needed to your plants when aphids and other soft bodied are a nuisance.
  Research done at Utah State University indicates that spraying this sugar-water solution in the center of an alfalfa field increased the ladybug population in one to two days by 200% to 1300%.

[Michelle Silva]

Thanks for sharing these recipes..sounds great!

[Paul Letby]

Hi guys!  I'm back with a quick question... Indoors, how long will it take for aphids to die with no nutrition?  I just purged my system of plants due to massive infestation.  Seedlings are at the ready and so far are clean and far away.  Cutting back food quite a bit so the fish can last a while.

[Raychel A Watkins]

Just had an enlightening experience with bugs and fish.  I have a problem with taro aphids on my taro.  I had sprayed about 3 times with the soap, oil, and molasses to no avail.  Today my WWOOFers and I cleaned out 2 24 ft troughs and washed all the taro plants.  Leonardoo the young man from Brazil was watching the fish in the trough eat the bugs when they fell off the plant.  he then dipped the plants into the water to get the bugs off and the fish absolutely ate them up in a furry.  There are about 20 fairly large tilapia in the trough, they get through the pipes as babies and live under the plants.  These tilapia devoured the bugs.  It sure beats taking all the plants out and washing them, saves water also.  From now on I am just washing the plants in a tank that has fish.  The guppies ate them also.  When everything was over there were no more bugs.

[Sahib Punjabi]

Nice...thank you for sharing Raychel. So nice to hear from you ...it has been a while :-)

 

God bless,

Raychel A Watkins said:

Just had an enlightening experience with bugs and fish.  I have a problem with taro aphids on my taro.  I had sprayed about 3 times with the soap, oil, and molasses to no avail.  Today my WWOOFers and I cleaned out 2 24 ft troughs and washed all the taro plants.  Leonardoo the young man from Brazil was watching the fish in the trough eat the bugs when they fell off the plant.  he then dipped the plants into the water to get the bugs off and the fish absolutely ate them up in a furry.  There are about 20 fairly large tilapia in the trough, they get through the pipes as babies and live under the plants.  These tilapia devoured the bugs.  It sure beats taking all the plants out and washing them, saves water also.  From now on I am just washing the plants in a tank that has fish.  The guppies ate them also.  When everything was over there were no more bugs.

[Sylvia Bernstein]

Great stuff, Raychel.  I've had the same experience.  On the one hand it is a bit harder to control bugs in aquaponics because we are somewhat limited in the tools we can use, on the other hand we have a super weapon in the fish!

[Converse]

   I have not read through this entire thread.  So please excuse me if the suggestion I am about to make has been explained already.    For those of you you have redworms or access to redworms or worm castings ( the castings, NOT vermicompost - two different things), you have insect control at your finertips that is aquaponics-friendly!

    Make a "brewed" worm casting tea.   Take 2/3 cup worm castings, and add to a gallon jar of non-chlorinated water.  Add either 1 tbsp of molasses or table sugar.  Place an air stone attached to a fish tank aerator in the jar, and aerate for 12-24 hours.   After the aeration time you will need to use this up within 18 hours, or keep it aerated.    WARNING: do not place brewed worm casting tea in a sealed container.  It will  build up pressure and the container can blow up, or the lid can blow off.  Just place a lid loosely set on top, if necessary. Use this tea as a foliar spray.

      Used as a foliar spray you can get rid of aphids, spider mites. tomato horn worms and white flies, etc...A host of hard bodied insects.   It will also make damping off, powdery mildew and black spot (just to name a few) a thing of the past.  You need to spray all surfaces of the foliage.

 

  Any extra brewed tea can just be used as a nutritious boost for any plants.   You do not have to buy any costly chemicals any more.  Just an investment of an air stone and fish tank pump that can be found at garage sales or at WalMart for around $4.  Then you are good to go!

   We run a redworm farm, and share this information with people all the time.  It really works.  We have many commercial farmers who buy our freshly brewed worm tea to use on their organic crops.  We only sell fresh, and brew in 55 gallon batches..  The bottled stuff in stores will not work for this.  If you have access to redworms to keep yourself, or access to worm castings, you can make this easily at your place.

 

Sincerely,

Converse

[TCLynx]

Very good suggestion Converse.  And I'll re-iterate your previous warning from other threads, leachate (what drips out of the bottom of worm bins) is NOT worm tea and not what you want to use for this.  You want to collect the finished worm castings from a worm bin and use them fresh to brew your worm tea for disease prevention and to battle bugs.  Aerating it and adding the sugar or molasses will really make the brew of beneficial bacteria boom and hence why you need to use it fast and why you don't want to seal it up.  If you let that boom of beneficial bacteria suffocate and die you will very quickly get a boom of not so beneficial stuff and a jar full of a stinking anaerobic mess.

[Aaron]

Apparently aphids aren't 100% bad. Apparently they do some repair work to plants as well. I came across this link on sciencebuzz.org today while I was looking for pictures of aphids to see if that's what I just smushed off one of my plants today. It's a little ironic entertainment:

 

What Would Aphids Do?