*muffin* wrote:
so far I am cringing looking at my "new" pond, waiting for the big algae
bloom, so far, not too bad,, getting kinda gloomy,,,, but not horrid.
from all I have read, plants etc are the best way to stop all this.... BUT
when you are in the colder zones,, & plant places say they won't guarantee
things till after June 1st,, what do you do? (ok, so I do have some hardies
out in the farm pond,, but to get cuttings I have to drain some water).
ALSO,, it is said when you have koi,, you do not put in plants ( as
several have agreed, on here, they just destroy them!) how are those ponds
kept clear?

Mine is kept clear with a veggie filter and BZT. Water
celery in the veggie filter works great. It starts growing
earlier than most other plants and is going well when it is
time to start feeding the fish.

I also read , it takes a few months for you bio-filter to start working ,,
uhh you have to go through this each spring?? I mean they do diebacteria
in the winter, right? speaking of, do any of you 'run' a filter in the
winter in the frozen north?? or just a pond heater or water spray??

Yes the bacteria die and we use BZT to get them started
early. I don't sell the stuff, but I do use it and think
it's great.

( I also must have been really lucky on our old pond,, it always froze
over for the winter, & we still had fish ,, ok in the spring)
I also read, ONCE you have an algae problem you can never clear it up.

Plants will take care of algae if you have enough. All
ponds must go through
a cycle and algae is part of it!

--
Bonnie
NJ
http://home.earthlink.net/~maebe43/