Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I'm renovating my new house, and i've got a poo brown shed right beside my fish pond.
I want to put lattice across it and grow white jasmine up it to cover the side of the shed, but most lattice is CCA treated, and i'm concerned when it rains some of the run off from the lattice will end up in the pond and kill my fish.

how sensitive are fish to this, will they die at the idea of it or am i over thinking the situation?

I wouldn't try it myself. Go with something you know is OK like chicken wire, builders reo mesh, or something else metal/galv.

You can get a molded plastic lattice, it's probably safe but you'd need to check. Comes in green or cream, might be other colours but I haven't seen them.

i thought about the chicken wire, but a wall load of chicken wire would rust and look terrible :/
it'd be hell cheap though.
the other option i considered is somehow get the jasmine to climb up the wall of the shed without a lattice

My growbed stands are all CCA pine or hardwood and the rain run-off gets into the fish tank without any issues. My growbeds are positioned directly above the fish tank so they get seriously wet when it rains. I have 80 silvers and they have withstood 2 months of sometimes torrential rain without loss.

How solid is your shed built?

My dad is growing a creeper as a living wall on his carport. He has screwed steel loops into the uprights and run heavy duty plastic twine through them. It's working well at the moment. It's been up about 2 years.

Another way to look at the rust is as a beautiful clay color. We actually have a "trellis" made of concrete wire on one side of our small shop and it looks very nice. The rust is very close to the trim color in this case and the vine growing on it is quite content and will hopefully cover most of the wire someday.

grow enough yummy stuff on your trellis, and you can no longer see it :-)

besides reo, rather than chicken wire (ugly I agree) will bend into the poo brown shed.
Let the plants do the prettying

the shed is plenty solid, it's 4x6 colourbond

Thats good, it should be fine if you wanted to to do the eyelet thing.

Most of the crumby 'tinfoil' things they sell as sheds these days wouldn't be solid enough to take it.

yeh i was thinking of the eyelet's when i mentioned doing it without lattice.

basicly they've let the sand pile up against the bottom of the shed and rusted it a fair bit around the bottom, so i'm concreteing it, putting in a proper drain and putting some big pots down the side and growing jasmine up the side of the shed.

Jeez Derek - just cos the fish are not dying doesn't mean that you or your family won't get cancer or some other horible thing down the track because of the leachate from the CCA. Copper, chromium and arsenic are not nice things. There is a reason this stuff has been banned from playgrounds.

You can buy galvanized mesh at most steel retailers

I'd go with the eyelet thing, I would avoid using the treated pine. For no other reason than I don't trust the stuff. I have no proof that it's dangerous though, my limited reading of the literature is that no definitive research has been done on whether CCA treated is absolutely safe using isotopically labelled materials and the reason it is being phased out in certain situations is because they don't know and don't want to take the risk. The definitive experiment would be incredibly expensive so it's easier for authorities to write a couple of policy/legal documents to cover their behinds and leave it at that.

Sorry forgot to add not all treated pine is CCA, there are other chemicals used as well now days for handrails and flooring..can't remember at the moment what they are.

Himzo

[quote="veggie boy"]Jeez Derek - just cos the fish are not dying doesn't mean that you or your family won't get cancer or some other horible thing down the track because of the leachate from the CCA. Copper, chromium and arsenic are not nice things. There is a reason this stuff has been banned from playgrounds.[/quote]

actually there isn't any good reason it's banned in play grounds. people are just saftey insane and run around screaming "won't somebody please think of the children"
they typically just invoke the cancer boogey man and everyone runs screaming for the hills.
the fact is that even though arsenic is potentially carcinogenic, the amounts used in CCA treated timber are more then 1000 times less then a leathdose, and the only recorded cases of people developing cancers from it were in fact BATHED in the stuff back when they thought it was a good treatment for what ales ya.
the chromium used fixates the copper and arsnic to the timber, and unless you were to high pressure leach CCA sawdust, you won't get anything near a dangerous level.
the REAL danger with CCA is cutting and burning the stuff. now that can cause you some bad mojo.