I mentioned that somehow I never smoked.
Thinking about it I remembered when I worked on the fish farm. It was in South Miami and they raised tropical fish and plants to ship all over the United States to pet shops.
There were about sixty large concrete pools which were about 12' wide by 50' long and 4' deep. The bottom was covered with about 3" of top soil, then about 6" of a special sand they used. The pool was then filled with water and whatever plant was going in that pool was planted about 1' apart. Live bearing tropical fish were introduced to breed then be caught by big nets, sorted, packaged and shipped.
There was a parasite which could get into a pool. It was called gammarus of which there are hundreds species. It looks like a tiny shrimp about a quarter of an in at most. It fed on the plants so it was a serious problem when it would turn up in a pool. It would leave holes in the leaves making them unsaleable.
The way we would kill them off was with...liquid nicotine. We would catch as many of the fish out of the pool as possible. We then would drain the pool down to about a foot of water. Remember, these were 12'x50' pools.
We could buy pure, liquid nicotine at the time in a half pint bottle. We then put two tablespoons-full of the nicotine in the pool. It would not kill the plants but would stunt their growth for a month or so. But it killed every other living thing in the pool and the pool would stink like an old smoke filled bar.
After a couple of days we'd drain all the water out and fill it again. We'd do that a few times and then let the pool sit without fish for a couple weeks, the residual nicotine would evaporate and we'd put the fish back again.
Probably illegal today but it sure was effective.
Last edited by Markle on 9/4/2012, 8:13 pm; edited 1 time in total
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