Gypsy's Bush has Crabs...

So... we all hear how DIY sometimes falls short of the real thing...

This is one of those cases....

I made a DIY EBB/FLOW for my moms, and as it works out, water stays pooled (stagnant) on the tray...

It doesn't have a low spot for the fittings, so it does not drain completely...

Algae has formed, and despite my best efforts, light + water = LIFE...lol..

SOoo.. also worth mentioning is the fact that ALaska is a giant mosquito nest in the Summer months... if you think the swamps of the South have mosquitoes..lol.. you have never been in an Arctic sawrm...lol...





All Summer.. pretty much EVERYWEHERE NOT PAVED... that's all of Alaska...lol...

So it is not unreasonable to understand that I get a "few" mosquitoes in the house... ALL FREAKING SUMMER...

Now...

Let's look at this picture...

I have (stagnant) water, light, algae, AND MOSQUITOES...

Hummm... I wonder how long it would take for the little bugs to move in...

Well the answer is.. faster than a speednig mosquito...

I have drained the res...

I am drying it and washing everything with a mild bleach solution...

I will be adding H2O2 to the solution, to try and "sterilize" things the best I can...

That's the short term solution...

The long term wil be to get rid of the unsuccessful DIY and slap a real tray in there...

This wil get rid of the Algae and stagnant water..

I will also be adding one of these to the res, as I have in my flower room...it filters solids (i have carpet...) and keeps the water moving in the res...



Well...

Enough rambling..

Here are the pictrures of the little bugs...

hey whats good g bush.. man thats kinda scary man, I aint ever seen mosquitos like that

sucks about the ALGAE, I have had some DIY not go quite as expected too...

I know your getting another tray, but in this situation would you be able to transplant them into soil if things didnt get better with the algae?
in
have a great day*wake and bake*

Hi MM..

Thanks for coming by...

As for "would I"...

Sure I could, but I really have no reason to do that...

I'll just get rid of the bugs...

It won't be that hard...

Get rid of the pooling water, get rid of the algae, get rid of the bugs...

It's a chain reaction..lol...

Cheers!!!

wow man!! thats some freaky looking mosquitos. we get em here to but they don't look like that

Dr. Greenhorn said:

wow man!! thats some freaky looking mosquitos. we get em here to but they don't look like that

Click to expand...

You mean the Larvae?

Those look pretty standard to me...lol...

Actually they look so textbook, it was a breeze to identify them?

or did you mean freaky cause there's so many?

Either way...

I'm getting rid of them...

Cheers Bro!

I was actually talking about the mosquito itself.... not the larvae ...sorry

I'll try to snap a picture of one of these bastards for you... lol...

try.. all you probably got to do is put a camera in the air.. and snap... im sure you will get a picture
I Have never seen so many blood suckers,

nono.. I mean a good quality close-up... in your face kinda picture...

I'll work on that today..lol...

lol thats alot of funky lookin mosquitos.....and i know they suck.....we had em up in nodak and u couldnt talk on the phone outside cuz all u hear is that fukn buz.......then the stupid fuckers would fly in ur eyes and get stuck........i just HATE those bastards

there are "mosquito dunks" that you can get and pop in the res... I hear they also help with fungus gnats.

how about a couple little gold fish? maybe a giant carp.

Oh, and I have the same issue with the return lines being too high to drain all the water in the res, so I just drilled a couple tiny holes in the low spots. dry trays always.

Looking forward to an ugly mosquito pic! I HATE mosquitos, because they LOVE me.

i wanna see one dammit......fuckin hippie, if it aint a broke wing it's solar rips of kief keeping you lazy. get that pic you!

mosquito not so bad right now I'm dealing with black flies there enough to make you slit your wrists if you have to spend any time outside "gardining" lol but none the less that is one hell of a swarm

I had the same problem with my DIY ebb and flow tables. A quarter of an inch of water always stayed in the bottom of my 3' X 8' tables and started a nasty case of root rot on my flowering plants. My remedy was to place 12 X 12 inch ceramic tiles in the bottom of the tables and leave about 1/4 inch between the tiles to channel the water towards the drain fitting. The tiles displaced all the standing water and now my E & F tables rock...As for my res tanks, I just dropped in a 150 gph pump and it keeps the water moving and no stag water problem so far. Hopes this helps

Neat trick - just get something to heavily agitate the water - moquitoes won't be able to breed in the water then. They need still water because water currents will break their tiny larval bodies.

For the algae - well, there's plenty of ways of fixing that.

My PERMANENT solution to the bug problem...

New tray, new res and an extra water pump in the res to keep it all moving...

Sweet as dude well i gess u fixed those little suckers the easy way lol
looks like a sweet little setup

Thanks.. that's the veg area for the moms...

Check the link on the sig for the journal...

Glad to see it looks like you took my advice.

it was the right thing to do...