perhaps then I did a good thing today. I pulled the pump out of the water to
clean the prefilter (yes there is junk on the bottom of the 5ft area), but when
I restarted the pump last time, the biofilter had so much gunk in it that it
dumped back in the pond with the waterfall. Today I drained the biofilter
(watr was black and smelly) and then restarted the pump with the drain still
open and basically did a water change while cleaning out the filter, hosed all
the filter material off and once the water ran clean (or should I say green) I
closed the plug and refilled the pond. Hope this helps.
All my parameters are good 0 ammonia and 0 nitrites, just lots of junk on the
bottom from not being tended to last year. It's like starting over.

Karen

In article ,
writes:
the biobugs adhere in colonies to the filter
material. what is normally rinsed off is the mulm and silt that are covering
the
colonies and keeping oxygen from them. Ingrid

if the pond smells bad it means there is a lot of organic crap in there being
worked
on by anaerobic bacteria. you need to get some really good aeration going in
there
and the bacteria will start breaking it down aerobically. if you use PP at
about
half strength you can slowly drag a net along the bottom to start dredging up
the
crud. the PP will inactivate gases that are released as you do this. I
wouldnt
leave a lot of crud on the bottom if the pond freezes over in winter for very
long
(where are you?). keep an eye on nitrates, dont let those climb over 20 ppm
without
doing water changes. Ingrid



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