Hello,
I've had a water lily in a half whiskey barrel for about 10 years it's always been beautiful but the wood had started to go so I bought a couple of new barrels to replace the old one and start a new one off. I think these barrels have come fairly fresh from the brewery (guessing here ) because its been about 2-3 months and the water is constantly slightly white and stinks. I didn't have any water pump going in the old barrels, they were fine without it, but I thought maybe things are just getting a bit anaerobic in there so I put a air stone pump thing in there from one of my fish tanks but that just seemed to make things worse. So I emptied it, bleached the inside of it and then re-charred the wood on the inside and refilled it. I only did this to one barrel because I didn't know what sort of effect it would have. I stuck a load of plants I already had in it, I thought that might help, a Schizostylis and a few other dwarf lilies.
Anyway a month on they both still stink, they are both a bit cloudy and now they have crazy amounts of rat-tailed maggots and mosquito larvae in them. I have a 3 year old and he used to play in the old barrel quite a lot, I'm worried it will be bad for him to play in them, the smell might put him off I don't know. I don't know whether to try and kill everything, which goes against all my normal instincts, I've read that rat-tails are actually quite hard to kill anyway. I think you can put washing up liquid in to kill the mozy larvae or oil, not sure! The water lilies are started to produce quite a lot of new leaves so they don't seemed bothered?
I just don't know what I can do to speed up all this, I don't even know whats really happening there, wondered if anyone has any experience of this or suggestions as to what I should do going forward? I assume with enough time they will settle down........
I've had a water lily in a half whiskey barrel for about 10 years it's always been beautiful but the wood had started to go so I bought a couple of new barrels to replace the old one and start a new one off. I think these barrels have come fairly fresh from the brewery (guessing here ) because its been about 2-3 months and the water is constantly slightly white and stinks. I didn't have any water pump going in the old barrels, they were fine without it, but I thought maybe things are just getting a bit anaerobic in there so I put a air stone pump thing in there from one of my fish tanks but that just seemed to make things worse. So I emptied it, bleached the inside of it and then re-charred the wood on the inside and refilled it. I only did this to one barrel because I didn't know what sort of effect it would have. I stuck a load of plants I already had in it, I thought that might help, a Schizostylis and a few other dwarf lilies.
Anyway a month on they both still stink, they are both a bit cloudy and now they have crazy amounts of rat-tailed maggots and mosquito larvae in them. I have a 3 year old and he used to play in the old barrel quite a lot, I'm worried it will be bad for him to play in them, the smell might put him off I don't know. I don't know whether to try and kill everything, which goes against all my normal instincts, I've read that rat-tails are actually quite hard to kill anyway. I think you can put washing up liquid in to kill the mozy larvae or oil, not sure! The water lilies are started to produce quite a lot of new leaves so they don't seemed bothered?
I just don't know what I can do to speed up all this, I don't even know whats really happening there, wondered if anyone has any experience of this or suggestions as to what I should do going forward? I assume with enough time they will settle down........