Tricks to having clearer water

[Pond Boy]

Plain out VERY bad advise. Ever seen a pond that is covered in duckweed and stagnant? The water will be crystal clear, The fish will naturally die off and all that will be left is plants. In a natural lake the mud bottom is the bio-filter, the waste drops to the bottom and the micro organisms break it down, over time the lake or pond will get more and more shallow and eventually dry up. Once the pond becomes completely covered in plants the the oxygen is deprived from the water and all that is left is water and carbon diozide. Of course this will take many years, In a garden pond this will cause huge PH and Ammonia spikes. Plants are a great benefit, yes you may get away with it for a while, and yes you'll have super clear water but no filter and no bio is just a disaster waiting to happen. Clear water is not a sign of a well functioning pond. The PH, ammonia, and nitrites and nitrates can be way off for fish and there be almost 0 oxygen in the water and the plants still thrive and the water be perfectly clear. but also the oppsite can occur, the water can be pea soup green, algae growing everywhere and look like crap, But if the PH are stable, the ammonia 0 the nitrites low and the nitrates high and good oxygen the fish can be perfectly healthy but the pond looks like crap.
Your advise may work on a VERY few applications, I have gotten away with it and tried it myself before, but for the most part, I have seen far more complete wipe outs than sucsess with this method.

Your a mod now so now you think I am giving bad advice? Larkin listen man every thing you said is the same as my advice as what I said. All the surface of every thing in the the pond is a filter all your doing by adding a bio is so you can take a closed system and overload it for your own gratification. You don't know if it works because you have never tried it so you say this is bad advice you godda be kidding me open your mind a bit step outta the box and try it then come back and report your results..Pleas don't cast aspirations till you know for sure it will not work!

All you doing is regeratating what you have read and been told over the years not facts... Your little pond you mention is noting like a closed pond you know and so do I...

 

[Pond Boy]

Dose this look like a dyeing pond that you describe?

 

[addy1]

Gosh of course he has to get the floating 4 leaf clover in his pond addy

No seriously there really is a plant for your pond of that name:
(Marsilea mutica) 2" - 3" four leaf clover floats on the water surface. A fast grower and a good plant to help cover the water surface.

i have it jw, it is growing just beautifully, also a fuzzy variety.

 

[fishin4cars]

Your a mod now so now you think I am giving bad advice? Larkin listen man every thing you said is the same as my advice as what I said. All the surface of every thing in the the pond is a filter all your doing by adding a bio is so you can take a closed system and overload it for your own gratification. You don't know if it works because you have never tried it so you say this is bad advice you godda be kidding me open your mind a bit step outta the box and try it then come back and report your results..Pleas don't cast aspirations till you know for sure it will not work!

All you doing is regeratating what you have read and been told over the years not facts... Your little pond you mention is noting like a closed pond you know and so do I...

I do think it's bad advise in the fact that most will not sucseed in that technigue. I also said it can be done, I admitted that as I have done my own fair share of ponds the same way. I'm saying that out of several attemps I found that there was only limited sucsess. I'm also looking at your pics, Guess what? Your filtering water!
Your the one stating that 0 filter is needed, well think of it this way, your moving water by a pump, that's adding oxygen, your using a gravel bed, bacteria cling to the sides of the pond, the gravel, the plants, so you have bio-filter going on, You have plants, which are mechanical filtration in a natural state as they remove the nitrates and help provide some oxygen. And you just stated you have a very low fish load. You discovered a way to balance. I'm not saying your pond want work. NOT AT ALL! I'm saying that it is bad advise to give to a ponder that doesn't understand all these principles and put them into the design of the pond. I've not only dealt with garden ponds, I've dealt with HUGE bodies of water, small bodies of water, lakes, steams, Bays, and rivers. I've had stagnant bodies of water that had life and complexed systems that honestly, WERE CRAP! OK so I do understand. If your wanting to say it will work, Show everyone all the steps needed to make it work so they understand what and how to do it correctly, OR they are coming to you to ask why a KOI or heard of a dozen goldfish didn't survive.
Since I have accepted becoming a Mod, I have stayed up late almost everynight answering questions and trying to get folks headed in the right path that had/have questions. I check every single thread to make sure everyone is being greeted and trying to make sure they are at least noticed and getting helpful advise. I've done this since and helped hundreds of people over the many years I have been doing this. I know from experience just as well as from what I read.

 

[Pond Boy]

F4C Agreed.. I do have a filter I do pump water that is where it ends. I have done reef tanks, ponds , fresh water plated tanks you name it I have tried it. Ok I wiil try to spell out i process of setting up a pond without a bio filter in another thread.

Sorry for the rant I just want peeps to know you do not need a filter to have a successful pond..

 

[fishin4cars]

If you had not had all the experience before you built your first pond with keeping fish, Do you honestly feel you could build a sucssesful pond without one? That was my point as far as being bad advise. You know one of the most effective filters being worked with right now is the Bakki shower, basically rushing water over rocks similar to doing a wet dry filter with bio balls for salt water. My 2500 gallon pond has two filters, One all natural, one a bio-filter in the filter fall. If one goes down there is still enough going on in the other that the pond can handle it's own until a pump can be replaced. There are very useful applications of all natural. I don't disagree with that at all. Addy's pond is really another technigue of the same principle. The primary filter is the bog. Moving water through rocks and plants.

 

[addy1]

And working great fishin, a "natural filter" lol built by me.

 

[Shdwdrgn]

Pond Boy - I have to agree with fishin here... You originally said nothing about using a pump to move the water around in your pond. No matter how many plants you have in the water, a pond without some kind of circulation will quickly become a stagnant cesspool. You have a pump. You are continuously running running the water through your bed of gravel and plants. You can call it anything you want, but that IS a biofilter.

In a riverbed, the debris settles into the rocks and is broken down by bactieria. In a 55-gal barrel filter, the debris is trapped in the bottom vortex and is broken down by bacteria.

In a riverbed, the various rocks and other objects create surface area for the bacteria to grow on, and expose the bacteria to a steady flow of water that they clean. In a 55-gal filter, the filter media creates the surface area within the flow of water.

In a riverbed, the plants will grow along the shoreline and absorb anything else in the water, but with a barrel filter we have to rely on directing the output of the filter past our plants. That's about the only real difference I see between the functionality of the two systems.

Personally, I don't believe you can over-filter the water, so I use both methods. I have two 55-gal barrel filters, PLUS I have about 15 feet of planted/graveled riverbed. I want to provide every opportunity for the natural processes to happen, and I figure the more types of filtration I use, the more stable the ecosystem will be overall against changes in conditions. All I'm missing now is a floating skimmer.

 

[addy1]

Yep some see my bog as a non filter, but it is one large bio filter and working great. Full of plants.

 

[HTH]

There maybe a perspective issue here. Back when I was into fancy goldfish I found the the breeder, collector, and the guy who just wanted a few nice fish all had different perspective and different goals.

It is not too much of a leap to imagine that that same could be true here.

My pond is unfiltered with a regenerative blower tossing water about a foot into the air, There are nearly six years of decayed plant matter on the bottom. The churning water keeps enough of the gunk in suspension to limit visibility to under six inches. If I fill a stock tank with the water the gunk settles and I can easily see the bottom. So there is no suspended algae and no string algae.

The perfectionist in me wants to clean the bottom and have nice clear water. But then the herons could more easily catch fish. The lilies would not have the benefit of the nutrients from the gunk on the bottom. Both the perfectionist and naturalist in me have valid points of view. Right now the naturalist is winning in that it is less work.

 

[DrDave]

Vacuum & or net all the mulm from the bottom then use netting to protect the fish. You can remove it when you are around, but always have it on at night and when you are away.

 

[HTH]

I was trying to point out that what these things are not a one size fits all.

For me removable netting as piratical on a pond this large. I have other liners waiting for me to turn them into ponds. Your suggestions are a lot of work for a system that is not broken.

 

[Karen]

I just went to visit a water garden center in Houston, Tx and all of there ponds are beautiful and CLEAR....all using the bog filtration system. It's really simple idea and seems to work. My pond is about 8 weeks old now and it FINALLY clear and what I hoped for...at first it was one disaster after another but now it's clear with 5 fish that are alive and well, 2 turtles and some tadpoles. LOL. Still waiting before adding the fish I really want. They had large and small bogs some made into the ponds, others are just pots with the rocks, plants, and water cycling through them....going to add a link so you can check it out.

http://nelsonwatergardens.com/gravel-bog-filter-construction/

 

[addy1]

nice link karen, I love my bog, it is working great.

 

[j.w]

I'm still trying to figure out where I can put a bog that will look right w/ my pond. Thanks for the info Karen :regular_waving_emot