Filtration

hey everyone. ive been working on my pumps and filtration methods. i used
to pump about 8 gallons a minute through a somewhat thick filter material
and within a week my pond was pretty clear. at the time the filtered water
went directly into the pond from the filter material. now, i have about
10-15 gallons per minute cascading down a waterfall and the top is filled
with hyacinth. there is no filter material now... when i use filter
material (even with the old set up) i was cleaning the material almost
everyday. i havnt had to change it all now with the hyacinth as my filters,
but the pond is completely green now. what should i be doing in order to not
be cleaning my filters everyday and get my pond back to being clean. The
filer is about 1 foot off the bottom of the pond so it doesnt pick up any
muck.. is this correct? any help is appreciated
thanx!
John

"John" wrote in message
...
hey everyone. ive been working on my pumps and filtration methods. i used
to pump about 8 gallons a minute through a somewhat thick filter material
and within a week my pond was pretty clear. at the time the filtered water
went directly into the pond from the filter material. now, i have about
10-15 gallons per minute cascading down a waterfall and the top is filled
with hyacinth. there is no filter material now... when i use filter
material (even with the old set up) i was cleaning the material almost
everyday. i havnt had to change it all now with the hyacinth as my filters,
but the pond is completely green now. what should i be doing in order to not
be cleaning my filters everyday and get my pond back to being clean. The
filer is about 1 foot off the bottom of the pond so it doesnt pick up any
muck.. is this correct? any help is appreciated
thanx!
John


Add aquazyme, and cut back on the fish food.

Air made the difference on my water.Grubbers link venturi is cheap,
uses otherwise wasted energy of the pump output, and is nonmaintaince.



On Tue, 03 Aug 2004 19:43:06 GMT, "John" wrote:

hey everyone. ive been working on my pumps and filtration methods. i used
to pump about 8 gallons a minute through a somewhat thick filter material
and within a week my pond was pretty clear. at the time the filtered water
went directly into the pond from the filter material. now, i have about
10-15 gallons per minute cascading down a waterfall and the top is filled
with hyacinth. there is no filter material now... when i use filter
material (even with the old set up) i was cleaning the material almost
everyday. i havnt had to change it all now with the hyacinth as my filters,
but the pond is completely green now. what should i be doing in order to not
be cleaning my filters everyday and get my pond back to being clean. The
filer is about 1 foot off the bottom of the pond so it doesnt pick up any
muck.. is this correct? any help is appreciated
thanx!
John

I can't tell you what will work but my experience might help you. I
started with green water and ended with clear. I have a 1300 gallon
pond, 2 koi, 2 dozen shibunken, half dozen lillies and iris. Before
last year it was all green soup below 4 inches. I tried adding plants
(they looked anemic) and adding potash and potasium and iron (no change)
and growing more lillies for shade (no change). My filter, at first, was
lava rock (it plugged quickly with green muck) and then I tried an in
pond filter (it just failed to do much). I've never had a problem with
ammonia, nitrates, etc. Last year I added one of those big feed tanks
and added 25,000 drinking straws. Not quite a month later my pond turned
clear. I can see shadows on the bottom (3 feet). At the end of last
year I looked and many of the straws were plugged and possibly the water
was just going around the others. Also there was a thick layer of muck
on the bottom of the filter (but not on the pond). I've read that
rotting algae creates an algicide and I assume that my filter formed a
place to catch algae, let it rot, and run the water past it. Before this
season I cut up the straws into little pieces so they were easy to work
with in the filter. I noticed a week or so ago that there was a big
hole in my pile of straw bits so it might be that the water is still
going around the bulk of my filter. I still have clear water. I also
fertilized the iris (I've always fertilized the lillies). Since the
iris are in pea gravel I assume fertilizer got into the water. So, the
iris are going crazy and the hyacinth are going crazy and the lillies
are even doing better. Now my only problem is that all of the roots from
the plants are making a nice place for string algae to collect. I got
some bottled bacteria and increased the water circulation and now I'm
waiting to see what happens. So far it seems better than before but it
could be that the fertilizer level is dropping. I'll try fertilizing
the iris again as a test.

So, I'm not sure I need anything more than a big settling tank and
filter media that has lots of large gaps. Big enough not to plug but
small enough to catch algae that can rot. The type of filter media with
the tiny holes would never work in my pond.

Matt


John wrote:
hey everyone. ive been working on my pumps and filtration methods. i used
to pump about 8 gallons a minute through a somewhat thick filter material
and within a week my pond was pretty clear. at the time the filtered water
went directly into the pond from the filter material. now, i have about
10-15 gallons per minute cascading down a waterfall and the top is filled
with hyacinth. there is no filter material now... when i use filter
material (even with the old set up) i was cleaning the material almost
everyday. i havnt had to change it all now with the hyacinth as my filters,
but the pond is completely green now. what should i be doing in order to not
be cleaning my filters everyday and get my pond back to being clean. The
filer is about 1 foot off the bottom of the pond so it doesnt pick up any
muck.. is this correct? any help is appreciated
thanx!
John

On Wed, 04 Aug 2004 16:45:02 GMT, MattR wrote:

snip

I've read that rotting algae creates an algicide

Matt, I don't mean to be attacking your creditability, but please, let's
not start a myth. I would like to see the article this "can't possibly be
true" information came from. Perhaps you misquoted Norm's Green Water
article regarding string algae versus's suspended algae in regards to
natural algaecide?

Gardening common sense says the only thing dead/rotting algae releases is
all the nutrients it ate as live algae. Getting it out of the pond, so it
releases those things before the bio-filter, giving the filter bacteria
time to break those down so it is less available for more algae to start
up. Not to mention, while it is rotting it is a good source of hydrogen
sulfide, that when left in the pond can be toxic to your fish when
disturbed. ~ jan


See my ponds and filter design:
http://users.owt.com/jjspond/

~Keep 'em Wet!~
Tri-Cities WA Zone 7a
To e-mail see website

1) I quote from Norm Meck: "When algae dies and is subjected to aerobic
bacterial decomposition by heterotroph bacteria, a by-product of this
process is a substance, released into the water, that is toxic to the
living algae." (http://www.koiclubsandiego.org/GRENH2O.html). That
would be an algicide. I'm not misquoting and, based on his tests, I
don't think it's a myth.

2) Nothing else explains why my pond is now clear. I did the usual
plants shade potash potasium advice for two years that pours from this
newsgroup and it did nothing. I put in a big stock tank and three weeks
later my pond cleared up.

3) Barley decomposes into something other than the nutrients it grew on
so why can't algae?

4) I'm just trying to help someone by describing my experience, so back off.


~ jan JJsPond.us wrote:
On Wed, 04 Aug 2004 16:45:02 GMT, MattR wrote:


snip


I've read that rotting algae creates an algicide


Matt, I don't mean to be attacking your creditability, but please, let's
not start a myth. I would like to see the article this "can't possibly be
true" information came from. Perhaps you misquoted Norm's Green Water
article regarding string algae versus's suspended algae in regards to
natural algaecide?

Gardening common sense says the only thing dead/rotting algae releases is
all the nutrients it ate as live algae. Getting it out of the pond, so it
releases those things before the bio-filter, giving the filter bacteria
time to break those down so it is less available for more algae to start
up. Not to mention, while it is rotting it is a good source of hydrogen
sulfide, that when left in the pond can be toxic to your fish when
disturbed. ~ jan


See my ponds and filter design:
http://users.owt.com/jjspond/

~Keep 'em Wet!~
Tri-Cities WA Zone 7a
To e-mail see website

On Thu, 05 Aug 2004 17:59:10 GMT, MattR wrote:

1) I quote from Norm Meck: "When algae dies and is subjected to aerobic
bacterial decomposition by heterotroph bacteria, a by-product of this
process is a substance, released into the water, that is toxic to the
living algae." (http://www.koiclubsandiego.org/GRENH2O.html). That
would be an algicide. I'm not misquoting and, based on his tests, I
don't think it's a myth.

Okay, thanks for the refresher, I guess it was I who mis-remembered, as I
thought (from reading his article quite awhile ago) it was the string algae
while alive, that it possibly gave off a hormone or inhibitor.

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

2) Nothing else explains why my pond is now clear. I did the usual
plants shade potash potasium advice for two years that pours from this
newsgroup and it did nothing. I put in a big stock tank and three weeks
later my pond cleared up.

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.

3) Barley decomposes into something other than the nutrients it grew on
so why can't algae?

4) I'm just trying to help someone by describing my experience, so back off.

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


~Power to the Porg, Flow On!~

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.

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."

I'm really sorry it came across that way. If you'd mentioned the article I
would have gone back to read it again, rather than questioning you. One of
those times that when one points to one reason why, when there really are
many, it made me go, "Whoa, wait a minute.... "

I don't mind if you disagree with Meck's ideas.

Actually, I send more people to that website than any other, so I rarely
disagree with Norm. I guess the rotting algae part (when Norm talks more
about an enzyme given off by the bacteria consuming the algae) hit me
wrong.

Meck never replies to emails.

In his defense, he's very busy with the KHA program, that generates a lot
of tests to grade, advice (read, hints) to give, plus questions off the KHA
Bulletin Board to answer. After training all us KHAs he (and the 8 or more
other experts involved in the program) sorta expect us KHAs to start
answering the questions, within our clubs and cyberspace I assume. ;o)

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.

Proven you wrong??? You lost me. I think the best advice you can give to
other is what we all so often hear and read: "One can never have enough
filtration." Even the experts aren't totally sure, or agree of what all
happens in the filter. They do have their educated theories, that are
probably pretty close to right.

Please don't let a Mars Venus misinterpretation stop you from teaching
others of how your experience helped you. Again my apologies, ~ jan


~Power to the Porg, Flow On!~

In article , MattR
writes:

2) Nothing else explains why my pond is now clear. I did the usual
plants shade potash potasium advice for two years that pours from this
newsgroup and it did nothing. I put in a big stock tank and three weeks
later my pond cleared up.

and your pond matured naturally. usually when it clears on it's own it stays
that way for quite sometime. plust the 300 gal stock tank didn't hurt.

I had the same problem with my pond, it was twice the size of the pumps I had
and not until I put in the correct size pump and time did it clear on its own.
your case it was the filter.

Karen
Zone 5
Ashland, OH
http://hometown.aol.com/kmam1/MyPond/MyPond.html
My Art Studio at
http://members.aol.com/kmmstudios/K....M.Studios.html
for email remove the extra extention