"Heather" wrote in message
...
Should the water hyacinth be removed from the filter from time to time and
the silt rinsed off the roots, then replaced? Or do I need to do
additional
filtering before the VF to get the silt caught first?

In my first year of ponding, I had very orange water due to clay run off and
uh...digging errors. Anyway, for a time, we would take the large WH out of
the VF, and gentyly wring the roots out. This removed TONS of the clay. I
would not recommend this for smaller WH as you can easily remove their
roots, but the larger ones faired pretty well in this matter. I'd also
recommend not doing this until at least mid-summer to ensure there are no
little critter babies in the roots that may get squeezed on to the ground.

BV.