Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Well thanks to Seamonkey we are able to ramp up the Biopod once again. It has been sitting dormant awaiting the necessary goods, namely eggs or larvae to start things going . We have tried before but were unable to keep a constant supply going. According to Sue, the hot weather has suddenly seen the arrival of egg masses in her backyard. Today she brought in clusters of eggs gathered up on gum leaves to hopefully kick start our pod.
Here are a few photos and we hope to keep you updated on our progress.


Soldier fly larvae are a real waste disposal unit and will eat many things that composting worms are not interested in such as meat, onions and dairy products.



The eggs are quite sticky and have an interesting design in the way they are layered.




Lid on and now it is time to wait. That good ol' patience thing again.

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http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum ... a&start=45 (Fayes system)
http://backyardfarming.com.au/phpbb3/vi ... f=24&t=119 (Fayes garden) https://www.facebook.com/Botanic.Obsession

So i go to the Biopod when I get home just to investigate and what do I find? They have been there all this time in my lovely new Biopod (thankyou Faye and Joel) and I was worried that they werent going to be very active. The blowflys have also been active as you can see by the egg I also took out of the Pod.
Guess what I will be collecting before I go to work tomorrow
Special delivery to BYAP

Well it hasn't been easy getting these little babies going. Sue has worked hard monitoring their progress and they pod was inundated with blowflies at one stage. The chooks had a mega feast of maggots and the fish loved them too. But the good news today is that the first Black Soldier Fly has been spotted. We assume it it one that we have bred here on site. Yay
The weather forecast over the next few days is in the high 30s, so that should suit them perfectly.
Here are a couple of pics


This little one was still drying its wings and we hope that it wil be able to escape the ever vigilant Willie Wagtail that hovers around the area looking for bugs to feed its babies.

We dug down and found the larvae happily feasting away. Things are looking a little dry and its looks like a top up of extra food is required. They certainly are voracious feeders!

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http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum ... a&start=45 (Fayes system)
http://backyardfarming.com.au/phpbb3/vi ... f=24&t=119 (Fayes garden) https://www.facebook.com/Botanic.Obsession

congrats.... I would love to run one, but I think I'll have to move out before I can! anyway... good luck keeping them going through the year! will get some from you if I ever get around to having a biopod!

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"I shall either find a way or make one."

Nice going there guys, hope you get a good harvest.
Normally get some of these in my compost bin but to hot and dry this year

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IBC system
Bigger system
Greenhouse system

They love the heat Mantis.

_________________
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum ... a&start=45 (Fayes system)
http://backyardfarming.com.au/phpbb3/vi ... f=24&t=119 (Fayes garden) https://www.facebook.com/Botanic.Obsession

Hi Faye
I am hoping to find out if anyone has ever frozen cane toads- then used them as a food source for Black Soldier Flies, which are then fed to fish. Would the poisons in the Cane Toads be filtered out by the BSF digestion? Anyone tried it or willing to?
New to posting blogging. How can I ask this over the blogging forum?

Matt

curious idea! nothing to date as far as I know, has been able to eat cane toads that's why they're such a huge pest. it would be interesting to see if the BSF can eat them.

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"I shall either find a way or make one."

Not sure about poison "filtering", but I guessing a pretty straight forward way to see if they will eat/digest them is to leave a dead one in a bucket in your back yard. If it is soon infested with HFL (maggots) and other bugs, but there a few dead ones in the bucket, then I would assume BSF would also take them on without dying.

That would be my first step before risking the wipe out of a BSF colony

talking of BSF, I found some maggots in my worm farm that looked a lot like those black maggots you guys have been showing here... would I be able to set up a BSF biopod farm with just a few maggots?

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"I shall either find a way or make one."

Hi jen, if you put those larvae into a bio pod they might help attract adult flys to lay more eggs although its getting too cool now. Temps need to be over 25 degrees during the day for the flys to be active. The best thing to do would be spread the black larvae around your yard, then set up a farm In spring and hopefully you will have adults flys to lay eggs in your pod

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Ben

Bender's System

Bender's Backyard

Crows eat them - they turn over the road kill ones and eat from the stomach - where there is no poison

As far as I know the toxins are not digested - much the same as magic mushrooms - there is some research being done on using them as fertiliser - try going to the website of Kimberley Toadbusters - they know a lot about that stuff

Hey all, just reactivating this thread in case anyone's interested in BSFL digestion of cane toads. I ran a little experiment over the past week and it seems to me that BSFL can process cane toads with no ill effects to the colony.

For the record, I placed a handful of BSFL (ranging in size from a few millimetres to 1.5cm) into a separate bucket with a defrosted cane toad that I had nicked slightly just to penetrate the skin (I also added a bit of carbon material and other food scraps in case that provided a more stable environment). One day later the BSFL were happily gorging themselves on the cane toad and a day after that it was just a few bones and a pile of goo. I couldn't see any dead BSFL and since I'd caught a few more toads in the meantime, I threw them in the bucket as well. All went a similar way (didn't even need to cut one of them open). So next time I'll be throwing them straight into my main bin, without defrosting them (on the presumption that my bin is big and warm enough to handle the slight temperature decrease) or even cutting them open.

Will let you know if anything changes, but for now I'm pretty confident that cane toad poison doesn't pose a threat to a BSFL colony

Can't speak for future effects on fish/poultry, but I'd be surprised if there were any...