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Message: [QUOTE="Waterbug, post: 105739, member: 2322"] There's not much harm adding barley to your pond, but it is worth pointing out a bit more about these studies. At least I find it interesting. The paper that started this is Newman, Barrett 1993. They did 8 field tests in ponds. Owners of the ponds rated on a scale of 0 = no control to 9 = no algal growth. These were untrained dudes as far as I could tell, certain no measurements, just gut feeling. The paper points this out...in all caps "THERE HAS BEEN NO INDEPENDENT ASSESSMENT OF THE SCORES GIVEN". And the results of what the owners (actually, the paper only said 8 ponds, could have been just one or two owners) saw as 6.75. That was the best possible case, maybe 50 or 60% reduced growth, whatever that means. They certainly still had lots of algae. As the Ohio Extension fact sheet said, there has been several studies in the US that tried to duplicate what the Newman paper saw. None saw results as good as Newman stated. And as [url="http://www.btny.purdue.edu/pubs/apm/apm-1-w.pdf"]Carole Lembi of Purdue[/url] said, Newman published another paper, I think in 1999, which was a bit defensive imo, in which he proposed the theory that barley produced hydrogen peroxide. This was only a theory, he presented only as a theory...no testing at all. He was just trying to comes up with some thinking as to why barley would affect algae growth. That 1999 paper was all people selling barley....for huge markups...needed. Everyone of them cite this untested theory as fact. And I've never seen any of them link to the actual paper. And of course people in water garden forums are only too happy to parrot the lie. I mean why not? Isn't like anyone is actually going to check. [url="http://www.waterbugdesign.com/pond/myths/barley.html"]My whole barley rant.[/url] [/QUOTE]

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