Bioballs

[rubyduby]

My pond is 8 months old and today I decided to clean out my Biofalls...When I took out the bag of bioballs and doused it in pond water hardly anything came off of them. When I opened the mesh bag to inspect the balls they looked brand new.The matala mats weren't bad at all either... Aren't they supposed to be coated with biofilm? When I cleaned my Biofalls at my old pond in Virginia the Bioballs and mats were hard to lift out since they had so much gunk on them...anyone have input?

 

[BKHpondcritters]

Your pond is fairly new at only 8 months old, so there's probably not a whole lot of 'gunk' yet. In all honesty, you really shouldn't clean out your biofall or the bioball bag more than once per year, since any cleaning will disrupt the good biological bacteria living there.

Our pond is now 10 years old & for the past two years we've had to clean out the biofall & its mats twice per year due to build up of 'yuk'. Once in early winter when we remove them for the 'off season' (putting them back in early in the spring). Then once again after all the tree seed drop/spring forest crud/toad spawning churning up everything time in the late spring.

 

[rubyduby]

Thank you for your response BKH...The reason I thought I would clean out the waterfall was because I had SO many tadpoles thinking that they probably got sucked up into the mats but apparently not many did...It is good to know that I will probably not have to repeat this task for a whole year (at 70 I find it taxing) I used pond water to clean everything so I am hoping that I did not set back the colonization of beneficial bacteria too much...