Smelly Whiskey Barrel and other issues....

[Cat]

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........

 

[tigertim]

I believe bitumen would kill off any aquatic life too.

Not killed off anything in my preformed pond, plants and fish very healthy, i did fill it up then leave it overnight and drain the water though.

 

[Cat]

Don't you lot that use barrels give the inside of the wood a coat of Black bitumem first, that would kill off anything a bit iffy in the wood polluting the water ?

Simple answer is that I have never had to coat them before. Just fill them up, wait for the wood to expand and then off you go. Over 15 years of using barrels and this has never happened before. I'm rather presuming it is pandemic related as this is the only time it has happened.

 

[Cat]

Your final post here has given me a certain degree of confidence Cat. I've had my wine barrel for about 3 months having been inspired by this Gardener's World video (BBC Two - Gardeners' World, 2021, Episode 10, Barrel pond). I constructed a traditional (ie with lining) pond at my parents many years ago and used that to establish a common newt colony and I wanted to establish a colony at my place. So, having watched this video, I contacted the supplier of the barrel that they used. All I can say is that it hasn't been remotely as idyllic as per the video and I'm relieved that I didn't put any newts in there as I'm pretty sure they would have been dead by now: the same problems documented above (stench, countless dead plants—water mint, water forget-me-nots, although not the iris and water lily which seem to be OK—murk, mosquito and hoverfly larva. I called the supplier who shrugged it off as "alcohol" (they actually knew I was using it for newts too) which the hot weather will "eventually" evaporate. Not in Manchester it ain't. I'm now quite regularly emptying the water and refilling and praying that it will sort itself out. So much for sitting with a gin and tonic next to a watery paradise this summer. Totally arsed off. does anyone recommend a good value water quality tester?

I used my Hanna pen to test the water. It does Ph, Micro Siemens and PPM however it didn't show up as different to my regular water. Summer wasn't good but over the winter they've all normalised, they are both fabulous now, so I'd just leave them if I were you.