My friends, i have the solution. Lets face it, whether you buy expensive pre-charged coco or youre like me and get the cheap gh or botanicare bricks, youre gonna have to kill off some gnats. Theres multiple routes, gognats (which doesnt work for shit), bti (which takes forever and still sometimes doesnt work, and soil drenches with pyrethrin/permethrin or h2o2. Well ive found the cheapest, easiest, and most effective strategy for eliminating the pesky bastards. Start getting coco bricks instead of bags, and simply boil the water you use to expand it. This will kill all the hybernating gnat larvae. Unfortunately it will also kill the trichoderma, but the good news is innoculant powder is cheap as fuck on kelp4less.com. put your brick in a 20gal bucket from home depot, and pour big soup pans full of boiling water on it to expand it. As it starts to puff up, scoop the steaming hot expanded coir off the top and cover the bucket with tin foil to seal in the heat. With this technique ive been able to completely drop the use of products like gognats and azamax trying to fight the little bastards. Ill post pics in a minute. Hope this comes in helpful for other cheap-skate coco growers like myself
This is done in mycology to pseudo pasteurize
I once had gnats and had no fucking idea why on one run. I must have fucked it up somewhere and not killed them off.
I'd also recommend using polyfil or some other filter with about a 1/4" hole in the lid to prevent the bucket form warping when the lid is on.
edit - on second thought you don't need the filter, different hobbies. The hole would still work well though.