Hope y'all don't mind, I've posted the same basic content under a couple of
different threads, in hopes of increasing my chanes of getting an answer.
We finally built a gravel bog to filter the pond. We just finished it,
yesterday. It's visibly making a difference, but it has a lot of catch-up
to perform, and of course, we have lots of powdery looking algae trapped on
the surfaces of the gravel. Will it continue to scrub the algae from the
water, even if it has a ton of stuff already trapped, or do I need to do
anything to help it get up to speed, and into the maintenance stage. Can we
leave it alone, and just let the natural "bugs" do their thing over time?
How does the decomposing trapped algae figure into the build up of bacteria?
Is that part of it?

I'm thinking maybe I should
1. add the sludge-eating stuff to break down the trapped algae?
2. put some mesh over the nozzle of our shop vac and suck the initial
overload out?

Which should I do? Some combination of the above?
Any advice would be appreciated.