I add Prime, before I add water. Prime is expensive, but you don't need much.....when I say expensive, like $28 and will last the season easily in a 1000 gallon pond.
Thanks, Tula.
Another thing: I have some sort of pond weed that wants to grow extremely rapidly. I have just under 100 sq ft of pond surface area, of which about three quarters is covered by vegetation of one type or another (including the weed). The weed appears through photo identification to be a variant of Hydrilla, which is an invasive species in Florida and elsewhere. It apparently was dormant in a couple of pots of
Alisma plantago that I bought from an aquarium/pond supply here in Daytona, but it's not dormant now!
However: I hesitate to pull it out, for two reasons: 1) It spreads out densely at the surface, which provides both cooling shade from mid day sun, and predator-cover for the fish - and 2) I have noted the goldfish actively pulling off and eating the leaves off the stems, so I must assume that this is a food source for them. I do trim them back almost daily because, along with the water lettuce and lily pads, the open water would close off very quickly otherwise.
My question is, is Hydrilla a decent oxygenator? It certainly is a dense green plant, indicating lots of chlorophyll. I have two small waterfalls and two "spitting" features which I think provide a healthy amount of physical oxygenation.
