I will admit to buying the better Rubber Maid garbage
cans for water holders, but using them for other
purposes for a couple of years to "season" them. I've
used the roughneck and brute cans for a year or two as
a bleach barrel and then as a sodium thiosulfate
(declorination) barrel. After a couple of years of
bleaching and weathering they get promoted to daphnia
culturing and water holding.
A fish-head friend who works for one of the major food
production/ candy companies mentioned that they just
throw out/ send out for recycling, these big blue or
white 50-gallon barrels. He noted that he had enough
of them and kindly offered to get me one next time one
became available. It took most of the summer, fall and
winter to weather and bleach the vanilla flavoring out
of the thing. ;)
I hosed it full initially, expecting to get a bunch of
mosquito larvae living on whatever residue remained.
Exactly one mosquito larvae grew big enough to be
harvested. Turns out that at least one Midwestern
"natural" mosquito repellent uses a vanilla extract in
it's recipe. I never believed the story until then.
The barrel works fine now.
Another source of those 50-gallon containers is one of
these recycling places. One popular locally, with
those who crush and save their aluminum cans, also
includes those food barrels among the many items it
collects and recycles.
They probably don't cost very much from the recycler.
One of the local killie club guys persuaded that
recycler to donate a barrel to one of our shows. He
took along a thank you letter, signed by our affiliate
president, when he picked up the barrel.
They should be accessible. Look in the phone book for
recyclers, maybe in a business directory for food
manufacturers.
By the bye, we also had a local bakery, which would
sell those white 5-gallon buckets. The ones we
purchased for $1 had had fruit pie fillings in them.
They were surprisingly greasy, but have been very
serviceable for at least a decade now.
All the best!
Scott
--- Snailcollector14 at cs.com wrote:
> Where did you get the drum from? I had gotten a
> trash can to hold my RO
> water, but it seems to add some sort of slick to the
> water so I decided not to use
> it. I have been using a 5 gallon bucket for my
> marine water changes, but this
> would not be efficient enough for all of my
> freshwater tanks.
>
> Thanks,
> Andrew
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