Quite frequently when I laser or sit in the 3d printing room I end up leaving with 1-3 mosquito bites.
Can i contribute/buy something or work on something to kill them? It’s consistent across multiple months and I see them flying around all the time.
Are they spawning in the plants or the tub under the bathroom sink?
(this is a joke) let’s deploy the bats
I wouldn’t have thought they’d come from either - mosquitoes need still water. If aquaponics isn’t stirring hard enough to get rid of them, we could add some mosquito dunks
@beirdo have you seen any evidence of larvae in the system?
I saw a few in the lobby bathroom today. There is standing water around.
I don’t know about mosquitos, but a member (I don’t know his name) said he worked at a nursery, and he pointed out several different infestations on the plants today. I don’t remember the details. Hopefully all the work Eric has been doing on the aquaponics is aimed at addressing these issues.
Mosquito larva need still water to survive to adulthood. The two pumps on the system keep the water moving fairly well. I have seen no larva in the either tank. But my eyes are not the best. They hang at the water surface and escape downward when disturbed. A couple of small fish would take care of the problem if any are spotted.
The taro had an infestation of spider mites or something. I removed most of the infested plants and it looked like someone sprayed some of the other leaves with something, hopefully just neem oil.
Mosquito dunks in the system will also kill the other organisms living in the tanks including the Large River Prawns
I have not checked them for larva but I’ve seen pails used to catch water from leaky faucets in the bathroom and shop.
I stopped by today and the bucket under the bathroom sink seems the likely culprit. That should be fixed on Saturday.
Bumping this there are still mosquitoes. I have taken to putting on picaridin just to go to asmbly…. But happy to buy stuff we need to fix this.
A variety of questions:
I’m pretty sure theyre not coming from outside as this has been ongoing during the last few months when there was zero rain outside so we had no mosquitoes.
I’m not an expert on what larva look like but didn’t see any after googling a picture and looking at the plants.
Theres still the bucket under the lobby bathroom sink with standing water in it. Its been emptied but looks to be still leaking.
No to water in laser room.
In addition to the bathroom sink bucket, is there any moisture under the small bar sink just outside the bathroom?
The bathroom sink leak source was discovered during the work day but not able to be fully repaired that day. I can’t recall if the bucket in there got dumped, but if it hasn’t that’s something that should be done (outside) so we at least don’t have a big bucket full of water. There was an uncapped sewage pipe under the utility sink outside the bathroom that got capped at the work day, but no leaks down there. I believe Eric already checked the aquaponics system and confirmed they are not coming from there.
It does seem like the bathroom sink leak and bucket water collection is the likely cause. I almost wonder if having such a large bucket is hurting us because it is easy to ignore for a good while with it’s large capacity and becomes more unwieldy for people to empty in the toilet? I’m not sure whether the leak is a spewing sort of one or more a controlled drip situation. Another thing @David is also working on is making an actual access panel to the sink from the shop side (there were just some hole openings in the wall between the shop and the bathroom). This will make it a lot easier for us to do plumbing work on this sink in the future.
Hopefully we’ll have the “new to Asmbly” sink ready to go in there in a couple weeks at which point we should have all leak issues fully resolved.
Until the leak is able to be fixed, it might be worthwhile to put some bleach in the bucket.
I’ve never found techniques for mitigating the already alive mosquitos that are inside.
Does anyone know trapping strategies for mosquitos inside?
They are attracted to UV light and CO2. There’s traps you can buy but they are pretty pricey. Prevention is really the key with them.
We bought some of this for home. I’ll bring some with me for the bathroom sink bucket when I come up later today.
At home, I have a hole I can’t close that lets bugs in. I’ve had good results with this indoor bug zapper. But eliminating the source would be better.
We have that same zapper at home 
I’m not sure Jason will be willing to part ways with it for a few days to leave it on for a while at Asmbly, but I’ll see.
I wasn’t able to bring the zapper, but I did bring a small bag of the mosquito bits and sprinkled some in the trash can under the sink (thank you to whoever dumped the can!). There were lots of warnings on the bag that I tried to capture on the bag I left there. Full info can be found here https://summitchemical.com/products/mosquito-bits/
This should NOT be used in the aquaponics set up unless @beirdo decides to use it there himself. Another thing to note is that a little goes a very long way (1 tsp per 25 sqft). We shouldn’t need to reup in this bathroom bucket, but if we find other standing water sources a steward can help get some put in those as well.
