Pest - What to do

It has been quite a while since I've updated my blog so today is the first of many new postes to come. We have been on a couple family trips and I've had some business travel so the aquaponics has mostly been fending for itself. Fortunately things seem to be doing quite well and plants continue to grow at a rampant pace. We now have peas that have flowered and are growing pods in only 4 weeks from planting. Beans are not doing as well in the same 4 weeks but the plant is growing. The fastest grower is a cucumber plant that exploded and now has 13 buds that I could count. My lettuce is almost ready to harvest again so we are looking forward to fresh salads soon.

On the negative side, I am seeing an awful lot of small bugs like aphids, fruit flys etc. To combat this problem and to remain organic we have ordered 2000 lady bugs to hopefully colonize the aquaponics garden area. They should arrive by tomorrow and I will tack some pictures and update how the release goes.

The second and more pressing issue is that last night I pulled out a lettuce plant to check its roots and out flew 4 to 5 mosquitoes. I know what did I expect having a large body of water is bound to create a breeding ground for the little disease caring pests. Not to fear, I have the Google machine right at my finger tips. Unfortunately lady bugs aren't the best at catching mosquitoes so I need a better plan, fish should eat their larve but that only helps in the fish tank and leaves the grow-beds defenseless since the fish would likely eat the plant roots killing their growth potential. My friends at www.friendlyaquaponics.com must have an answer so off to their site I went. After some searching on their site and in the manual I got from them I was able to locate the answer and its a good one, mosquito fish! These little beauties will eat the mosquito larve, other bug larve, algae and clean the plant roots effectively helping things grow even better. Not to mention the Friendly folks swear that they never see mosquitoes on their property any more, no mosquitoes in Hawaii thats cool.

I have found a local source for Mosquito fish http://phoenixtropicalfishinc.com/ and I plan to stop there on my way home tonight. I'll blog about the addition of these guys into my system tonight.