Reel McKoi wrote:
"Elaine T" wrote in message
om...

I'm finding that the water in the lower two barrels of my pond is too
turbulent for small floating plants. The water lettuce seems to ride
its way to a quiet spot against a marginal and stay, but the azolla gets
pushed under at the spillway outflow and tumbled around underwater.
Then its roots fall off and clog up the filters. I've finally netted
most of it out of the lower barrels, except for some that's more or less
"corraled" with black airline tubing because the fish need the shade.
Not exactly elegant.

===================brevity snip!

It sounds like you have too much current in these barrels. There's too much
turbulence for the plants (and maybe the fish). I would cut that flow down
quite a bit unless you plan to stick with tough plants like water-bamboo and
Iris. Forget water lilies, they'll be miserable in the current. They like
almost still water.

I turned the pump back quite a bit and suddenly, fish appeared!
Floating plants aren't moving nearly as much either. Now maybe I know
why the fish been jumping out. Wish I'd figured that out BEFORE I did
the 50% water change this evening. :-| I checked here on pump size
before buying it too.

Are Pondmaster Pond-mag pumps OK pumping against a ball valve closed
about halfway? I know they're designed to handle quite a bit of head.
Mine's 350 gph pumping at 2 ft head - I had the ball valve closed a bit
(thus my estimate of 200 gph), but not halfway like it is now. If
they're not OK against back pressure, I'll auction it off at the
aquarium society meeting this weekend and get a smaller one.

Thanks!

--
__ Elaine T __
__' http://eethomp.com/fish.html '__
rec.aquaria.* FAQ http://faq.thekrib.com