well I just made a convert of the Goldfish Guru, Jo Ann Burke. She
sold the GF business but kept her koi. They are absolute monsters in
a 16,000 gallon pond. Even tho they only feed a pint of food a day the
ammonia has been climbing thru the roof. Partly it is because Jo Ann
has had 2 operations on her eyes and Steve had a double knee
replacement (he climbed poles for the phone company). So they been a
bit out of commission in keeping an eye on things.

I been yammering at her about putting in a veggie filter especially
cause when the hurricanes hit they cant get out to do their 3000
gallon per day water changes (yeah, they got their own well). They
have a huge generator for storms so the pumps and air work. But Steve
always resisted the idea.

She finally got some 4 food kiddie pools and nailed them to the edge
where the big pipes return water from the big sister filters dumps
into the kiddie pools. I yanked up a huge clump of my water celery
(had about a 2 feet spread in my filter), boxed it up and sent it. She
dumped it into her filter where it sank in. The next day the plant
was above the water line and has been spreading.

WELL... her ammonia is vanishing, the last couple days it has been cut
in half and I suspect it will zero out soon... all this WITHOUT any
water changes. I also suspect that when the ammonia was too high the
biofilters werent working either and they are not kicking in as well.
She still needs to fill up the other filter, she is waiting for
somebody to send some plants. Wish there was somebody in Mobile with
an excess could give her some stuff.

Anyway...... what she said was she can see the mulm accumulating right
behind the roots in the little filters. so I suspect that the water
is clearer cause the roots slow the water waaaaay down and trap the
sediment. Ingrid

On Wed, 8 Aug 2007 21:27:27 CST, Phyllis and Jim
wrote:
The water of our pond is enormously clear just now. It also looks
like the algae is virtually gone in the ponds. Has anyone a theory
beyond the roots are bigger?