hello sustainable growers this is Jonathan from Melbourne aquaponics! in
this video I would like to show you a little trick to manage the pests in
aquaponics.
As we know in aquaponics we don't use any pesticide or any chemical to get rid
of the pests and therefore we rely on nature and on the different interactions
that we can have between different living creatures that are into the ecosystem,
the aquaponics ecosystem. At the moments in Melbourne in Australia this is the
end of winter and therefore the aphids are starting to grow and to colonize our
crop. Unfortunately the Predators are not very present yet
obviously they are coming but it's still very cold and they always take
a bit of time to arrive so we always got peak of pests, a peak of aphids
and later on we got the Predators that are coming and it may take few weeks
actually so during this time the aphids are very happy and they are going very
fast so obviously I lose a bit of my crop which is okay it's part of the of
the of aquaponics and of working with nature but because we don't have the
Predators yet I'm gonna use... I'm gonna put the plant in contact with other
predators which are actually the fish so I'm going to take few plans that are
extremely affected by the aphids and I'm gonna put them into the fish tank for a
nice clean and that's what we're going to do right now
okay so here we got broccoli but you can see that there are aphids everywhere so
the problem with this kind of plant is that the aphids are on the leaves
obviously. You see, it's dramatic it's on the leaves but it's also on the seeds
I mean when I said seed it's actually not the seed it's it's the flowers right
just before the flowers but the problem is that the aphids that are here on the
Base are going to be very hard for the... the fish are going to have some trouble to
have access to those aphids but anyway I'm sure they're gonna find a lot of
food below the leaves because you see there
are aphids... oh look at this that's horrible anyway its nature it's okay it's gonna
be a nice food for the fish so I'm gonna take this plant out and I'm
going to put it into the grow bed, I mean not into the grow bed sorry into the
fish tank. What is very important and interesting to realize is that you see
that I got aphids here on this broccoli I don't have aphids on those little
lettuce you see, and here I got another little lettuce, I got celery that is in
perfect conditions you see so that's the tricky in aquaponics and in
permaculture it's always to balance you know, if you put one species of
vegetable if I had broccoli everywhere I would have had the aphids everywhere and
I would lose all the crop. Here I only lose this plant and a few others that
where around, few other broccoli but I don't lose everything you see and
and a bit further here I got some other broccoli that are going very well. I
don't have any aphids on them, you see the leaves are perfect you can look underneath.
it's very clean. So that's the trick
of aquaponics it's to... you know to put some barriers, the barriers are the other
plants and therefore even if I lose a few here I can still up some broccoli
here but also I got all my other crops that is in perfect conditions
you see that this broccoli went into flowers because I didn't pick it on time
I was on holiday, I was away. But you see that everything is going really well I
just have a little program on this one and I had another problem on the one
below at the back, this one you see here. Unfortunately I get rid of all the
aphids that were on it because I put it into the fish tank but the fish took it
they ate all the leaves as well so this plant is not going well at all I
don't even know why I put it back and just want to see if it comes back if I
can have something but anyway I'm not gonna eat much from from this from this
broccoli anyway I already had a crop from it I already cut it here but I had
some nice new seeds here and I was ready to to pick it but unfortunately when I
came back from holiday it was full of aphids so now the fish took care of the
problem let's see if it comes back and for this one I'm going to put it into
the fish tank and I'm gonna take care of it I'm not going to leave it for too
long but unfortunately when I see where the aphids are I'm quite sure that the
fish are not going to be able to remove everything because here you see they get
rid of the problem but they ate everything right, so basically if I have
to wait for this time they gonna eat the leaves in the same time so basically the
solution would be to put them only with fingerlings fingerlings a silver perch
are not eating the leaves at all so in this case it would be fine but here I
mixed a mixer size in my tank I got both I got both fingerlings with with big
silver perch so there is no real option for me to just separate them so
obviously why is the small silver perch are gonna clean I'm gonna remove all the
aphids so big one I'm gonna focus on the leaves and then I'm gonna start to eat
the leaves so it's going to be the challenge let's see how it goes so I
just put the plant into the fish tank upside down
and you can see that the leaves are all deep into the tank and the fish have
completely access to the leaves so they have also a access to the to the aphids that
are living all that are living on the leaves and here you can see that
they are very attracted and they are all looking for those little aphids around so
in this tank we have silver perch fingerlings but we also have biggest silver
perch and the biggest ones are very attracted by the... by the plant itself
they turn vegetarian when they... when they grow and they are trying to get a
bite from from the leaves so here I got a little challenge, I have to find the
good timing, just enough time for the little fingerlings to eat all the aphids,
but not enough time for the big silver perch to be confident enough and to come
in to eat the leaves so I think I'm going to leave it for maybe 40 minutes
and after 30 minutes I'm going to check and see how clean is the plant and see
if we still have some leaves remaining.
Okay so it has been now into the water for maybe thirty minutes, a little while
so I'm gonna stop even if we still have a few aphids I think so because I see that the
fish are still on. I prefer to remove the plant now otherwise the big silver
perch are really gonna eat all the leaves and I'm gonna lose the plant so we'll see
what... we'll see how it is now
so you can see that it was full of aphids everywhere and very honestly I
can't see any of the aphid remaining I
can't see any of them which is really good.
I'm sure we still have a few here between those... those little flowers I'm
sure they're some but from a general point of view I think we remove most of
them. Oh yeah here but I'm sure that's a leaf... oh yeah here we still have one they,
missed all those ones. Otherwise you can see that they definitely took care
of the problem and I could definitely put the plant back into the water and
they will take care of the problem 100% but I'm just scared that they would... they
would eat the flowers and the seed and their leaves so I'm just going to put it
back, plant it back and see how it goes. I mean I'm gonna remove the... the aphids
that are still on the leaf that we can see with my fingers and put them into
the fish tank later on so now I'm going to plant the broccoli back into the grow
bed. here we are so now I'm just gonna remove the... the
leaves that were very much affected and that had some aphids remaining, I can't
find it anymore but maybe one of the big ones.
oh yeah it's yeah that one I got it so here you can see that I still have
some aphids so what I'm going to do with this leaf I'm going to put it into the fish
tank and the fish are going to have a feast and yeah we'll see how this one
goes or I'm sure that the aphids are going to come back anyway because I
still that we still have a few between the flowers but anyway we took care of
the problem here, we decreased the population. So this plant is still very weak but I
hope that some predators are going to come and take care of the problem and by
keeping this plant here the few aphids are going to still develop on this plant
and it's going to avoid to affect the older ones that are gone that are in
perfect health. You can see that this technique is working quite well
depending of the kind of fish you have obviously you need to have fish that are
adapted to this kind of pest. If you've got very large fish they are
never going to eat small aphids and if you got vegetarian fish such as I do,
I got silver perch, if they are small like mine that's okay, if they are big I
got a few big ones into the tanks they are vegetarian so if it's a soft plant
such as lettuce you can't do that because as soon as you put the lettuce into the
tank, obviously the silver perch are going to get rid of the aphids but they are also
going to get rid of the lettuce, of the of the salad right, of the whole plant. So
you can't do that with this kind of plant. If it's cabbage you know those
kind of leaves that are a bit stronger you can do it but just keep an eye on
them because after a while they eat it anyway. I did... I made the mistake
with the previous plant and... well the plant lost all the leaves, obviously I
don't have aphids anymore but a plant without leaves is not the best. Anyway
it's mostly for fun because those plants that I'm putting into the tanks
are very much affected by the aphids
and even now removing the aphids is a bit too late. I'm just back from holiday so
I couldn't do it before but yeah normally we should do that a bit earlier.
so anyway it's still a funny thing to do because you get rid of the pests and it
feed you fish the fish really love to have this kind of live food you know,
it's the best food you can give to your fish you know this kind of live insects
it's full of vitamins full of proteins as well and it's completely natural and
it's really into the... you know the mindset that you should have in
aquaponics and in permaculture to work with nature and to use a waste or a pest or
something that is a problem and to use it as a something that has value for the
system you know like here it's the food of the of the fish at the end. So you know
the food of the fish is very costy, its costly... obviously it cost money to buy the
food but also it costly for the environment because the food is
manufactured by factories and it's really a processed thing that we really
don't like we are not really proud of it in aquaponics so when you can replace a
bit of the pellet that you give to your fish by live food that is free and that
is available thanks to nature well do it! So here we change a problem into an
opportunity. So I hope you enjoy the video and I hope you put it in
application or you use this technique into your company's setup
thank you so much for watching the video, I really hope you enjoyed it don't
forget to get your free gift from this screen you can also leave me a comment
below the video subscribe to the channel and see my last video. I really hope to
see you soon and I wish you a fantastic success with aquaponics. Have a good crop!