Finally got around to cleaning out my filter/falls yesterday. It'd been
two years since I last attacked this chore. The water flow seemed just
fine last spring and I still had a fresh image in my mind of my lower
back pain from lifting the 4 net bags of lava rock out the previous
spring that I decided I'd just skip this maintenance duty.

As you might imagine, the filter tub was full of muck/mulm as were the
filter pads and lava rock. I really don't see how water was able to flow
through that mess. I was remembering your encouragement from last year
~jan, to switch to Matala pads. I'm going to do just that after I post this.

Thanks to to chip.a.wood for the lead on the newsgroup service and news
reader. I took your advice and am using both.

Last thing, some of you may remember a post of mine three years back
about a water moccasin in my pond. Careful observation allowed me to
correctly identify it as a Yellow Bellied Water Snake. I was able to
remove if from the pond where it had thrived for those three years. My
fish population had declined noticeably.

Peer support is good.

JB

On 5/23/2010 9:49 AM, JB wrote:
Finally got around to cleaning out my filter/falls yesterday. It'd been
two years since I last attacked this chore. The water flow seemed just
fine last spring and I still had a fresh image in my mind of my lower
back pain from lifting the 4 net bags of lava rock out the previous
spring that I decided I'd just skip this maintenance duty.

As you might imagine, the filter tub was full of muck/mulm as were the
filter pads and lava rock. I really don't see how water was able to flow
through that mess. I was remembering your encouragement from last year
~jan, to switch to Matala pads. I'm going to do just that after I post
this.

Thanks to to chip.a.wood for the lead on the newsgroup service and news
reader. I took your advice and am using both.

Last thing, some of you may remember a post of mine three years back
about a water moccasin in my pond. Careful observation allowed me to
correctly identify it as a Yellow Bellied Water Snake. I was able to
remove if from the pond where it had thrived for those three years. My
fish population had declined noticeably.

Peer support is good.

JB

You are welcome. Glad it worked out.

Chip