Well, its been awhile since my last post, but Ive been busy during the winter. After 18 months of fish waste buildup in the gravel growbeds I had the misfortune of major clogging in the beds with fish waste at the end of December. Two of my grow beds clogged completely, causing them to overflow and draining two of the fish tanks overnight. I only had about 4"-6" of water in each tank, but thankfully I didnt lose any fish, but due to the extreme cold of the water(approx. 45 degrees), it took me several days to fill the tanks back up. I had to add water and wait for it to heat up over a day, then add more, and on and on until both were full. I then took on the task of cleaning the growbeds, this took approx. 7 full days over a two to three week period in January, in the cold. It wasnt any fun, since I only had a five gallon bucket with holes in the bottom covered with mesh and a high pressure hose nozzle on a garden hose. I could only wash about three gallons of gravel at a time. It was painstaking, back breaking work, and cleaning 400 gallons of gravel should not be taken lightly, but it paid off in the end. Unfortunately, I had contracted the flu while doing this in temps that hovered in the 30-40 degree range and I paid for it afterwards.
I had to remove all 40 tomato plants and most of the basil and mint from the beds, everything else had been choked out by the basil and tomato plants prior to the clogging. I was able to salvage a few pieces of mint and a few basil plants, but everything else was tossed out. I replanted 6 weeks ago and you can see from the video that cleaning the gravel beds was well worth the effort.
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