No one has ever told her otherwise that I've known of, and I've known her
quite some time now. ) Course we may have to bring her down a peg or two
after this. just kiddingVBEG

Regarding her comment about surrounding the pump. You can see a picture at
my website on Page 7 of *My Pond Photos*. I don't use the vinyl screening
within as I have a filter on the outside. Do remove any prefilter
material/foam to the inlet of the pump, per K30a, you won't need it with is
set up.

The goo you mentioned, could also been dead or dying algae, especially if
it is loose, easy to sweep away. What's on the bottom can be sucked off
with a shop vac set to vac water. ~ jan (website below sig line)

See my ponds and filter design:
http://users.owt.com/jjspond/

~Keep 'em Wet!~
Tri-Cities WA Zone 7a
To e-mail see website

On Wed, 4 Feb 2004 "Mogweed" wrote:

Cheers Kathy, you're a wonderful woman - don't let anyone tell you any
different )

Mogweed.

"Ka30P" wrote in message

There are many types of algae.
The single free floating cells make
your water look like pea soup.
String algae is long flowing strands, like
strands of string.
Substrate algae is the stuff that coats
the surfaces like a fuzzy green sweater.

All algae grows because of nutrients in the
water - nutrients for algae are sun, new water, fish waste, fertilized run
off,
rotting plants, blown in dirt. You don't have fish waste or rotting plants
but
you do have 'new' water, sun and maybe some runoff from rain?

Substrate algae isn't a bad thing (except for your pump and that's a
seperate
issue). Substrate algae keeps pea soup algae at bay and the dreaded string
algae. It provides food for fish during times when fish should not be fed
(water temps under 55F.).

Once spring gets here you can add as many plants as you can stuff in and
the
plants will start using up some of the nutrients.

Your lights will have to be wiped off.
Your pump probably needs some protection.
Also depends on the actual pump. Some have these fine little screens which
clog
up rapidly.
You can remove that and surround the pump with black vinyl window
screening and
put it in a slotted basket. Takes longer to clog up that way.


kathy :-)
A HREF="http://www.onceuponapond.com/"Once upon a pond/A