My master gardener training doesn't allow me to call it an icide.

I figure if something can kill it, something's an it-icide. This is just
much nicer than man made whatever because it's a negative feedback
mechanism. Algae increases, algae rot increases, algicide increases,
algae decreases. Balance.

Yeah, but, just putting in a bigger filter makes a big difference, I don't
know that 3 weeks of algae rot would give off enough by-product to do the
trick.

It might have been 4 weeks, but after 2 years of pea soup it was a big
surprise. It corresponds with what people see in the spring.

Anyway, I'll try and be more polite here, but I still disagree. Before I
had this filter my hyacinth did nothing and the water was green. If I
was lucky I could keep the WH green, but they never grew. This year with
the filter, I added a bunch of fertilizer tablets to my iris plants
(that sit in pea gravel) and the hyacinth are doubling in size every few
weeks and the water is clear. To me it seems like there's a lot more
fertilizer in the water than before. But the water is still clear. So I
disagree with the idea that algae is solely proportional to nutrients in
the water. Obviously the filter is doing something and it is bigger but
I don't think it's removing nutrients from the water. Otherwise the
hyacinth wouldn't be growing.

My main point is that the big tub is THE difference in my pond. Not how
much I feed the fish, or the number of plants or fish, or the sunlight,
or the fertilizer. It's just a big fat settling tank with a blanket over
it keeping it dark. There are a bunch of straw bits in there but I'm not
sure that's doing much.

Like I said, I wasn't trying to attack you, and I'm sorry if you felt so.
Geeze, why are people so touchy anymore, that we can't have a civil
conversation? I was even hoping to defuse anything by mentioning I wasn't
questioning your credibility.

Please tell me, what did I say or how did I say it, that rose the hair on
your neck, so I can correct it in the future? I'm here to learn and/or
teach when applicable, not make enemies. ~ jan

Since you asked: First, I brought the whole algicide thing up a year
ago, referenced the same web page of Meck, talked about my experience,
and the response, to put it nicely, was cool. So I stopped reading this
newsgroup until about a week ago, waited for the first "my water is
green" post, and tried again. You see, I tried most of the ideas that
come up in this newsgroup and nothing worked but this new idea from Meck
worked great and I wanted to get it out so people like John might
benefit from it.

Second, you sound sincere now, but "Matt, I don't mean to be attacking
your creditability, but please, let's not start a myth" comes across a
bit shy of "Matt, I don't want to call you a jerk, but, hey, you're a
jerk." And yes, I snapped back and I appologize but it would have been
less confrontational to just ask me to reference what I had read, read
it yourself, and then disagreed with it. I don't mind if you disagree
with Meck's ideas. I'd like a discussion of them in this newsgroup
because I think it would help people, and besides, Meck never replies to
emails.

Anyway, I figured I was back where I was last year and that was
frustrating. But you've proven me wrong and that's great. Thanks.