Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

AAAACK! Now THAT........ was gross! (and I'm a well-seasoned father and former hospital worker, so I've pretty much seen ((and smelled)) it all....)

Have you seen a man eat his own head?

+2

worse... I've seen a set of triplet girls who were SUPPOSED to have diapers on pooh pooh paint their ENTIRE bedroom.

That work for ya?

(@G2N I'm sure you're familiar with a "Code Brown" ?)

Wow, what a fun thread!

Will be watching your continued progress, G2N!

Thanks, MrP.

My 6-figure tech industry job went up in smoke after 9/11. We pretty much lost everything and started over from scratch. I got a couple of barely-over-minimum-wage jobs and went back to school. Had kind of an epiphany one morning, driving to work to wipe elderly bottoms for the next 8 hours to earn what I used to make before my first coffee break. I looked at the homeless guy I saw on the corner every morning, and I realized how very little there was keeping me from being right where he was. I was broke and teetering on the brink of homelessness, just one more turn of bad luck away from standing on a corner with a cardboard sign instead of driving an aging but serviceable car to a job that worked me harder than I'd ever worked before for less money than I'd made since high school. And I'd never done drugs, drunk alcohol, gambled my earnings away, or been too lazy to get my hands dirty or take a job that was "beneath" me to earn an income. I'd never been in trouble with the law, slept around, abused my kids, or shirked my social responsibilities. I'd never done any of the things I always assumed made people end up begging for money and sleeping under bridges, and yet there was not a whole heck of a lot between me and that very situation.

I started learning to see the person beneath the circumstances, that day. I started learning not to jump to judgmental conclusions about people less fortunate than me, or to think I was somehow better than them rather than just the egotistical ungrateful beneficiary of a life pretty darned lacking in hardship and misfortune that I somehow assumed I had earned rather than just gotten through pure accident of birth and good fortune. I started realizing all the ways our society and this country have failed to take care of our own citizens the way basic human respect and dignity, which I had always thought I had but actually didn't have a clue about, dictates.

I don't make six figures any more, but I'm richer than I ever was before. The worst thing that ever happened to me turned out to have been one of the best things that ever could have.

Wow. I'm not sure where that came from.

Yes, I am. I had a couple of clients today that just blew me away with the things they have endured in their lives, and with their tenacity and determination to survive and overcome and grow stronger and better in the face of things most people can't even imagine, let alone deal with. I was inspired and humbled for the millionth time by people our society has written off as undeserving "takers" and worthless leeches on the system.

I promise I'll write something about water and grow beds and media soon.

Had more than my share of those, working my way through nursing school! Not to mention the ever more creative ones that happen in inpatient psych. I'm not sure what it is about psychosis that brings out the poop Picasso in so many folks. Freud was onto something with that anal fixation stuff, I think!

Discuss harder! And make him start a thread when he gives in, so we can see what happens!

I have always tended to surround myself with quirky people. Normal people are just so tedious and boring!

My favorite psych saying is about how to tell the staff from the patients--the patients are the ones who get better.

Ditto... I think quirky people are normal.. the rest are just zombies that haven't died yet...

AQUAPONICS-RELATED STUFF:

I decided to see what a little bit of heat might do to the system, so I ordered a 1000w submersible aquarium heater and controller from Amazon. It arrived today while I was working. To make up for all the off-topic goofiness I've been posting, I bundled up and slogged out to the greenhouse with a flashlight to stick it in the system. I set it on its lowest setting (69ᵒF). The starting water temp was 42ᵒ, and the greenhouse air temp was 33ᵒ. I put the heater in the sump, and the temperature probe in the fish tank. No particular reason on the latter, except that it was easy to reach and the suction cup would stick to the inside of the IBC fish tank, but probably not the inside of the Rubbermaid trough sump.

I probably won't be back out to check it until Saturday, by the looks of my appointment schedule for tomorrow, so that should give it time to get to wherever it will end up.

MrP, are those all your kids in your avatar? 'Cause if so I'm thinking it's high time you had a new hobby. Aquaponics may be just the ticket.

We just found out the people across the road from us have 13 kids. I had noticed an inordinately large number of vehicles in their driveway most evenings, but I just thought they were very social, or something. Turns out they WEREN'T having huge parties every night, after all. They were just having nice quiet family evenings at home!