On Sat, 25 Jun 2005 18:18:07 -0700, Courageous
wrote:

You haven't mentioned what you want to achieve.

I haven't the foggiest what I can achieve. I just don't want to screw
things up.

Be that as it may, it's
my suspicion that you're going to need to talk to an expert for a water
feature of that size. Often, filtering with any formal techniques is nearly
impossible, unless you have a rich man's budget. More natural techniques
like appropriate planting are followed, as well as perhaps circulating the
water somehow, by adding whatever you can afford in the way of low pressure
high volume pumps (e.g., http://www.azponds.com, see the "Sequence" brand
pump for a good example of pumps to move maximum amounts of water for minimum
watts). Forget the idea of turning over your volume once hourly, that ain't
gonna happen here.

I imagine I'll get some sort of gas powered high volume pump to have
available should I ever have to use the pond as a reservoir for fire
fighting. I could power that virtually anywhere for a few hours. As for
electrically driven stuff, what with the distance and all I'll bet I can't
drive much over about 10 amps, total. I can probably supply that 24/7, the
local grid permitting. While power is pretty dependable here, I don't
think I'd plug in any life support systems...

Typically with large natural water features, from the reading I've done,
one of the very best things one can do is install a central fountain that
draws from the deepest point in the pond and blows it straight up out of
the water. This circulates the water at the bottom, which is ordinarily
quite stratified and very low in oxygen.

Far out. I think I can manage stuff like that.

The other thing that I'd say here is take care with some of the standard
water gardening plants (water lettuce, hyacinth, parrot feather), they are
likely quite invasive in your area and if they get established in your
pond, you'll have no end of headaches.

Both the front pond and the back pond have what I think is duckweed. The
front pond is almost covered by it now, the back pond (which gets a lot
more shade) seems to have halted at only about 10% coverage. The front
pond has a bunch of lily pads (the flowers are white with yellow centers,
they are supposed to be real common around here, I think they are very
pretty anyway) the back pond doesn't have any lily pads but it does have a
bunch of yellow canna plants along the side. The middle pond doesn't seem
to have any plants floating in it.

Thanks for the ideas. Like I say, I don't want to hear down the road:
"You should *never* have done that." I'm not real bright. I often have to
depend on others to tell me not to do stupid things.

Galen Hekhuis NpD, JFR, GWA
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